"I'm old, but I'm not an idiot": With this angry statement, the seventy-eight-year-old Spaniard Carlos San Juan De Laorden struck a chord, made himself heard among politicians and managers and started a counter-movement to the digitally driven, increasingly miserable service for bank customers like him set.

San Juan has already collected almost 625,000 signatures with its “Soy mayor, no idiota” petition addressed to eight Spanish financial institutions.

Ursula Scheer

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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"I'm almost eighty years old and it makes me very sad to see that banks have forgotten older people like me," writes the pensioner from Valencia about his motivation.

Bank customers in Germany are well aware of what he says: branches are closing, opening hours are being shortened, telephone inquiries are in vain or get lost in the hotline labyrinth – and, according to San Juan, people are always being referred to the app, online banking or an app distant office.

"Neither fair nor humane"

"It's neither fair nor humane," says San Juan, often even humiliating.

As a former doctor, he still gets along comparatively well digitally, but anyone who is not firm in online transactions and has no one to help is treated like an idiot.

It goes without saying that people who cannot navigate the Internet easily should be given easy access to payment transactions, as are people with mobility problems when it comes to public buildings.

The example of San Juan shows that it is worth giving a voice to the digitally discriminated, who are not heard in the online public.

When his petition surpassed 600,000 signatures, San Juan symbolically presented it to the Ministry of Economy and the Central Bank in Madrid.

Spain's Minister of Economy and Digital Affairs, Nadia Calviño, spoke to the press at the pensioner's side and announced that "effective measures" would be adopted by the end of the month to improve the situation for the digitally disadvantaged.

And Santander, Spain's largest financial institution, has promised to extend opening hours by three hours.

Go then!

“El País” reports that, according to studies, not only the generation of pensioners feel digitally neglected, but around a third of the population, for example when accessing services, job offers or state aid.

In Germany it shouldn't look much different.

If inclusion, anti-discrimination and accessibility are demanded with so much verve in other areas, why not with a view to the gap between people online and offline in our society?

Of course, the fact that San Juan had to beat its opponents with its own means highlights the superiority of the digital.

Without the Internet, his petition would hardly have been as successful as it was: The pensioner launched it on the online platform Change.org.