¡ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

 

There comes a point in every altruist’s journey where the heart grows tired—not because it has stopped caring, but because it no longer understands the silence it receives in return. For years, many of us in Europe, particularly in Spain, have opened our homes, our wallets, and our time to help those fleeing war, poverty, and instability. Ukrainians, Russians, North Africans, Sub-Saharan migrants—we have taught, fed, sheltered, and protected them. Yet, a strange emptiness has begun to settle in the hearts of some of us: a quiet question that refuses to go away.

What happens when your hand is met not with gratitude, but with criticism? When generosity is mistaken for duty? When those who receive the most complain the loudest?

There is a painful irony in watching individuals from collapsing regimes or violent regions arrive to safety—only to scorn the very systems that protect them. Psychologists, language teachers, housing, food programs, social workers—entire structures bend to serve, often without conditions. And yet, for some, it is never enough. Spanish values are "backwards." The food is "wrong." The help is "too slow." The culture is "too open," "too Catholic," "too disorganized," or "too bureaucratic."

For some of us who have devoted years to integration programs, this dissonance wounds deeply. We believe in human dignity, in shared progress, in second chances. But increasingly, we encounter people who do not wish to adapt or contribute—who want Europe, but not its values; who want rights, but shun responsibility; who live among us, yet never with us.

This is not a plea for applause, nor a demand for blind submission. It is a melancholic reflection on the futility of helping those who have no intention of meeting halfway. True integration, after all, is a two-way street. But what if one side parks indefinitely?

The real tragedy is not the failure of policy, but the corrosion of trust. Every act of ingratitude plants a seed of cynicism. And cynicism, once rooted, makes future compassion harder.

This is the dilemma of modern solidarity: when does help become self-harm?

Let us keep helping. But let us also learn to recognize when help is not wanted, when it is met with contempt, and when perhaps—just perhaps—it is time to step back, and let others walk their own road.

Sergio Calle Llorens