Pull Up a Good Chair: Why I Wrote a Song About Waiting Forever for an Honest Politician

Madrid, October 25, 2026

By Mike Sain't Louis

There is a conversation that happens in every bar in Spain with astonishing loyalty to the script. The evening news comes on the TV at the far end of the room, and someone with an elbow on the counter announces that they're all the same. Someone else nods. A third person adds that it has always been this way. And the bartender, who has heard it a thousand times, keeps drying glasses.

I turned that conversation into a song. It is called "Un político español," "A Spanish Politician," and I want to explain what it is and, just as important, what it isn't.

It is satire, not a report

Let me say it up front. "Un político español" is a satire. It exaggerates, it generalizes, and it says things nobody would say under oath. It doesn't point at any real person. It doesn't name a party. It talks about a collective character, the Spanish politician, the same way jokes talk about the mother-in-law or the neighbor on the fifth floor.

Political satire is one of the oldest traditions we have. From Greek comedy to newspaper cartoons to late-night TV, somebody has always been laughing at power, and exaggeration has always been the main tool. Nobody thinks a caricature is a faithful portrait. The nose is bigger so you can see it better.

So please hear my song as what it is: the venting of a tired citizen, in the words people use on the street when they've had enough. It isn't an analysis. It's a mood.

The art of waiting, sitting down

The chorus turns on a wait. You have to wait and wait for someone honest to show up so you can vote for them. And the answer arrives immediately, in one of the most Castilian phrases in the language:

"Pues espera bien sentado"

Roughly: "Well, you'd better wait sitting comfortably." In Spain, telling someone to wait sitting down means that what they're waiting for isn't coming. If you're going to wait, get comfortable, because this is going to take a while. It's half practical advice, half mockery, and every Spaniard understands it without a footnote.

What I love is stretching it. It isn't enough to wait sitting down. You have to wait well sitting down. That little "bien" adds a dash of comic cruelty. Grab a good chair, a cushion, whatever you need. This won't be solved by this afternoon.

A whole language of useless waiting

Spanish is full of expressions for waits that lead nowhere. Waiting sitting down. Waiting for frogs to grow hair. Waiting for Saint John to lower his finger. American readers will recognize the family: when pigs fly, when hell freezes over. They all say the same thing with different pictures. What you're hoping for is not going to happen.

It fascinates me that a language has so many ways of calling something impossible. It says a lot about a culture that has grown used to watching promises get postponed. And politics is probably where those expressions get the most use. Somebody makes a campaign promise, and somebody else answers with a proverb about waiting.

My song leans on that whole tradition without quoting it. The chorus is one more variation on the same idea, and the listener fills in the rest.

The word I chose on purpose

There is one word in the lyric I'd like you to notice: "honrado." It doesn't mean brilliant, or efficient, or even exactly "honest" in the modern sense. It's an old word with a lot of history in Spanish. It sounds like a grandmother, like a trade. An honrado worker. A humble, honrado family.

Choosing it lowers the bar dramatically. The song isn't asking for a dazzling leader or a management genius. It's asking for someone decent, which is the minimum you'd expect of anyone. And still the chorus says: keep waiting. That's the bitterest part of the joke. You're not asking for the moon. You're asking for the basics, and even that seems hard to find. If the lyric asked for an exemplary politician, it would sound like a utopia. Asking for an honrado one, it sounds like exhaustion.

Bar-counter language

The song doesn't watch its vocabulary, either. There's a rude expression people use in Madrid when something gets deeply on their nerves, and the lyric drops it without asking permission. That's how people talk at the counter when they're fed up. I write that way across my whole catalog: with humor, without censorship, because humor is also a way of telling the truth.

The suspicion in this song didn't start with me. The title of my blog essay nods to the "turno pacífico," the old arrangement in nineteenth-century Spain under which two parties took turns in government. Distrust in Spain feels inherited, passed down at the bar like a family recipe. My song just sets it to a beat.

Why I'm telling Americans about this

You don't need to know Spanish politics to get this song. The scene at the bar, the TV in the corner, the shrug, the "they're all the same": I suspect you've heard your own version. What changes is the language of the shrug, and I find Spanish's version especially delicious.

A note on how I work, since people ask. I write every lyric. I'm a lyricist, composer and music producer, and I run my own independent label. The music and the vocal performance are generated with AI, which I use as a production and arrangement tool. The words, the idea and the artistic direction are mine.

Listen, download, read more

"Un político español" and the rest of my music are free to stream and download at https://mikesaintlouis.com, with the lyrics to every song. You'll also find it on Spotify, Deezer and the main platforms. The longer version of this essay is on my blog: https://mikesaintlouis.com/blog/la-sospecha-heredada-un-politico-espanol-el-turno-pacifico-y-el-desencanto-de-barra

About the author. Mike Sain't Louis is an indie alternative artist based in Madrid and calls himself "the first AI singer-songwriter." He is the lyricist, composer, producer, artistic director and CEO of his own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS. His project PLANETA GAYFOLK, built over about two years, includes 273 singles and more than 280 music videos, arranged as a trilogy about traveling to a planet where everyone can live as they are. Many listeners discovered him in 2024 when "Tan Cateto" went viral on TikTok.

Press contact: info@mikesaintlouis.com · https://mikesaintlouis.com · Instagram @planetagayfolk