Who helps the invisible ones?

The other day I was walking in the shade and I found a young bearded and disheveled man lying on the ground, right under my doorway. I didn't know if he was breathing, and he didn't react to my words and stimuli.The neighbor across the street, whom I sometimes see on the terrace and with whom I had not exchanged a single word – perhaps at some point, during COVID-19, when it seemed that the balconies were coming to life – filled me in on the situation. She told me that this boy was not well, that she had seen him pacing around and that he had been sitting there for a while, unconscious. Then I realized that the situation was real. I immediately called the Emergency services.And here comes the least cinematic part of the story. No immediate answers or ambulances flying with sirens blaring. First, the classic answering machine that makes you press numbers as if you were participating in an escape room. Then, when you finally manage to speak to someone, it seems they don't understand you – perhaps because you are speaking to them in your own language; who knows what the mystery is. More waiting, and more waiting, while you already imagine that it will end up becoming a marathon. But, in the end, the reality was much better than I expected. The ambulance arrived in about ten minutes and the professionals acted with great diligence and efficiency.But that is not what left me feeling uneasy.It was the people.Throughout all that time, people kept passing by him. Not one or two people: a good handful. Some changed sidewalks, as if his condition were contagious. Others didn't even lift their eyes from their mobile phones – priorities, you know. No one stopped. No one asked him if he needed help. It was as if that young man were just another trash can on the street, invisible to everyone's eyes. I ask myself: would the same thing have happened if, instead of a young man appearing to be homeless, it had been a child, an elderly woman, or a man in a tie? I don't think so.This has a name: aporophobia.Aporophobia is the rejection of poor people. The term was coined by the philosopher Adela Cortina, combining ‘áporos’ (‘poor’) and ‘phóbos’ (fear). But it is not just a matter of prejudice. It is deeper. Our brain avoids what is uncomfortable and approaches those who can contribute something. And, furthermore, these people remind us of an uncomfortable truth: that we too could end up there. A bad streak, an addiction, a depression… and there we are. No one likes to think about it.The result? Invisibility. Humiliation. People who stop counting. A snake eating its own tail. And yes, we all know what should be done: treat everyone with dignity, do not judge by appearance, do not value people for what they can give us. Easy to say. Difficult to practice.But let's not fool ourselves: this is not just an individual problem, nor is it an issue that depends exclusively on everyone's individual responsibility. It is also—and above all—a political issue. Let me explain. There are those who act as if poverty disappears just by not seeing it. The recipe is simple: remove it from the center, put it out of sight. Evict, displace, and consider the problem solved. But, of course, poverty does not disappear; it simply shifts, almost always towards the usual neighborhoods.And cities are adapting to it. Benches where you cannot lie down, spikes, metal bars… It is what is called hostile architecture. In other words: designing public space so that living in it –or, rather, surviving in it– becomes increasingly difficult for those who do not have a home. The goal is not to solve the problem, but to make it invisible. Like when, as children, we covered our eyes thinking that what scared us would disappear. The difference is that here it is done with public resources. This is the model defended by the PP and Vox.And when this indifference goes one degree further, what happened in Gijón occurs. On November 26, 2022, a person sleeping on the street suffered a brutal assault that the perpetrators recorded and spread on social media. Not for robbery. Not for revenge. For humiliation. Just because. Because they were vulnerable. The viralization of the video led to a citizen complaint that triggered a trial. The positive part of all this –if there is any– is that the response was resounding. The sentence, published a few months ago, recognized aporophobia as a hate crime. An important precedent. Because it makes it clear that these are not isolated cases: it is violence against those who can least defend themselves.When the paramedics took that young man away, I continued home. I don't know what became of him. But I do know what stayed with me: the feeling that the problem is not just poverty, but our brutal capacity to get used to it. Because a society is not defined by how it treats those who succeed, but by how it looks at – or ignores – those who have been left behind. And the day you walk past someone lying on the ground and don't even consider whether they need help, perhaps the problem is no longer just theirs.It is ours.