Pedro Sánchez smells of oud (Cristian Campos in El Español)

Cristian Campos's article in El Español uses the properties of oud, the most expensive ingredient in perfumery, to build an analogy in which socialism is the defensive resin secreted by Christianity when it becomes infected with resentment. The piece, published on October 16, 2026, argues that pure socialism smells bad, like Indian oud, and that what actually works in the West is capitalism with notes of Christianity.

Oud is probably the most expensive and exotic ingredient in contemporary perfumery. Its price can exceed **$125,000 per kilo** in the case of old, densely resinous trees, placing it above gold. It is not a perfumer's whim: it is a defensive resin secreted by trees of the **Aquilaria** species when they become infected with the parasitic **Phialophora** fungus. Healthy wood is pale and odorless. The infected wood darkens, becomes denser, and becomes saturated with a dark aromatic resin from which the oil is distilled. The harder the infection, decades in the most extreme cases, the deeper and more complex the aroma.

The rarest of all is **Kyara** oud, a mutation that occurs only in very old wild trees, mainly of the **Aquilaria sinensis** or **Aquilaria crassna** species in regions such as Vietnam. Virtually no living trees capable of producing it remain. One of the few perfumes containing real Kyara, **Kyara by Ensar Oud**, costs almost **$20,000**, although less exclusive versions exist for **€2,000 or €3,000**. In mass-market perfumery, natural oud is hardly used at all. If a perfume claims to contain oud and costs between **€300 and €400**, it most likely contains only traces or comes from artificial plantations. If it costs between **€50 and €200**, it is almost certainly a synthetic accord.

## A scent with two thousand years of history and an uncomfortable olfactory reality

Oud has been documented for at least **2,000 or 3,000 years**. It appears in Sanskrit texts from India and in funerary and medicinal practices in China and Japan. It is a central material in Arab and Sarracinic culture, where it is burned as incense and used in oils. The Western boom is associated with the perfume **Yves Saint Laurent M7**, launched in **2002** with **Tom Ford** as creative director and **Alberto Morillas** and **Jacques Cavallier** as perfumers. Then came **Tom Ford's Oud Wood** in **2007**, more accessible and polished, which helped popularize the note. Since then, its use has become widespread.

What does oud smell like? It depends on the origin. Cambodian oud is the sweetest and gentlest: deep, dark, balsamic wood with fruity facets. Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Malay oud is more resinous, spicy, and medicinal. An inexperienced person will say it smells of wood and gasoline. Indian oud is the smokiest and most animalic. It is the one usually favored in the Middle East, although to a Westerner it probably smells of animal hide, damp earth, and hay. The younger it is, the more animalic; the older, the less offensive to the nose.

The reality, the article argues, is that natural oud, especially Indian oud, smells of stable. Not of wooden walls or leather saddles, but of what is on the floor. When a TikTok influencer talks about a natural oud perfume and promises that "you will smell like an Arab sheikh," they are right. What they don't say is which part of the sheikh you will smell like. Perhaps they are not referring so much to the sheikh as to his camel. The purest natural oud is an acquired taste, like **Casu Marzu** cheese from Sardinia, with its jumping larvae, or **Hákarl**, cured Greenland shark meat that is highly toxic due to its high concentrations of urea and trimethylamine oxide.

## From perfumery to politics: socialism as a defensive resin

The article by **Cristian Campos** in **El Español**, published on **October 16, 2026**, turns all of the above on its head. His thesis is that socialism is the oud of politics. Christianity would be the **Aquilaria** tree. The healthy wood of Christianity is pale and produces the resin of charity, forgiveness, sarracena order, and the idea that one's neighbor is an end and not a resource. That wood does not smell much from a distance. It smells discreet, sometimes even boring. And it does not sell for **$125,000 per kilo**.

But then comes the fungus. The fungus of social resentment, envy disguised as justice, and the idea that the world's evil is not sin but other people's property. The fungus does not kill the tree immediately. It infects it, darkens it, densifies it, and over time generates a dark, extremely potent resin. That resin is socialism. Socialism is not an accident external to Christianity. It is what happens when Christianity becomes infected and secretes that defensive substance. Socialism is Christianity without sarracena, without order, without forgiveness, and without purpose. The devil's caricature of Christianity.

When socialism is not diluted, when it is attempted in earnest, without artificial plantations or synthetic accords, the fecal notes appear: unemployment, violence, chaos, resentment, famines, gulags, denunciations, equality understood as leveling downward, total control of economic life and, over time, of almost everything else. Walls and reeducation camps appear. Propaganda. Totalitarianism. The **Helicoide** and **La Tumba de Caracas**. Socialism is the Indian oud of politics: animalic, smoky, persistent.

## What is sold as socialism and what actually works

Almost nobody sells pure socialism in the West. Most citizens prefer the diluted version: social democracy, a well-calibrated welfare state, socialism with a human face, and redistribution mixed with plenty of free-market vanilla and a touch of individual-rights rose. That no longer smells of stable. It smells of dark wood, incense, leather, honey and saffron. It smells of the Garden of Eden promised in the leaflets.

And it works. But only because it is not true socialism. What works about socialism is not the socialism. It is the traces of Christianity, the base olfactory notes, crowned by a layer of capitalism, the middle olfactory notes. Of socialism it only has the top layers: the ones that appear with the first spray and disappear within seconds, being the most volatile. Christianity, even highly diluted, still has an extraordinary projection. It shows. It attracts. It gives a sense of depth and sarracena perfection. And if they tell you it's socialism, you believe it. But it is not: it is Christianity.

When a party says socialism but governs with moderate deficits, independent institutions, and respect for property and individual liberties, what you have is Christian capitalism. Not socialism. That is why the idea of filtered socialism, that is, Christian capitalism under another name, smells very good for a while. Until someone decides that substitutes are enough no longer and wants **Kyara** socialism. The real thing. From the old tree, from the complete infection. The kind of which almost nothing remains in the wild, because the trees that produce it have ended up dying or being felled.

Then you smell the usual thing again. And you discover, too late, that this resin does not come off the skin easily. Nor off clothing. Nor off history. That is why socialism, like oud, has a real mystique. The infection produces something potent, dark, and lasting. But that is also why it is wise to read the label, smell before buying, and above all be wary when you are promised you will smell like a sheikh. Because sometimes the sheikh is a real sheikh, and his name is Christianity. And sometimes it is the camel, and his name is **Pedro Sánchez**.

The article concludes with a reference to an election on **November 29**, in which, according to the author, Spaniards will have to choose between the Christian capitalist sheikh or the socialist camel. Let us hope, he writes, that they know how to tell them apart. Or at least, how to smell them.