Showing kindness towards foreigners

If you are interested in reading about football, you probably read about the racist incident that took place during the match between Barcelona and Villarreal. Someone in the crowd threw a banana at Dani Alves, the Brazilian player in Barcelona's team, who calmly picked it up and took a bite out of it before continuing play. Alves subsequently made the comment that there is racism towards foreigners in Spain. I don't want to disagree with Alves as obviously he is talking about his personal experiences, and I agree with him that racism should be tackled, however I would like to highlight some positive examples where Spanish people have shown extreme kindness towards foreigners.

Photo courtesy of Sky/Guardian website

From our personal experience of living in Spain as two Brits, we have found our neighbours very kind and friendly towards us, showing great patience as we struggle to master their language!  Our friend Jacqueline told us about an incident not long after she moved here, where she was conned by two of her fellow countrymen into lending them money and inviting them into her home for meals after they allegedly lost their credit cards. When her Spanish friends and neighbours found out what had happened, they brought her food and gave her money to cover her losses.

The most recent incident was one that I read about in the regional paper that happened over Easter.  A Romanian man called Julius had moved to the Murcia area about twelve years ago to work and since then he has been living in a caravan. His caravan burnt down (they're still investigating the cause) leaving him homeless.  Two young women had seen Julius in tears and felt sorry for him, so they started raising money in the village where they lived. Thanks to their efforts and people's generosity, they managed to buy Julius a new caravan only three days' later. Times are very hard in Spain, and many people are struggling because they have lost their jobs, however in spite of this they are still capable of showing great kindness towards foreigners.