A Cuban resident in Spain was insulted by other customers on the terrace of a bar while she was trying to carry the dirty glasses to the counter to help the waitress. Yeni (@yeni09_14) narrated the incident in a TikTok video posted on Saturday, which generated hundreds of reactions.
The incident occurred in the town where he lives, in Spain, where he had gone for a job interview at that very bar. After the meeting ended and before leaving, he picked up three glasses of ice and two small cups of coffee with their saucers to take them back to the counter.
It was then that other customers started to insult her. Since she was wearing headphones, she didn't hear the comments until she took them off.
"He's going to be an idiot," they told him. "Don’t be foolish, leave that there; that’s her job," they added, then asked him, "You're not from Spain, are you?"
Yeni explained that they probably identified her as a foreigner after hearing her speak during the interview. The waitress, on the other hand, received the gesture with kindness and gratitude.
"I was insulted for wanting to make the waitress's job easier, which, let's be honest, I feel like doing, you know?" Yeni said in the video. "Now they insult you for being helpful, for being kind. Just because you don't do it doesn't mean I can't."
The young woman also drew on her personal experience to justify the gesture: "Because I have worked in hospitality, because I can't make the work easier, I mean, I have to endure insults from people simply for being kind."
He concluded the narrative with a Cuban expression that sums up his state of mind: "I’m stuck like a stiff arepa," which is equivalent to being paralyzed or at a loss for words.
In the video description, Yeni was explicit in distancing her experience from any generalized criticism of the country: “Just to be clear, this is not a critique of the country or anything like that; there are people like this everywhere. The girl at the bar was very kind and thanked me, and people were saying all sorts of things to me, but honestly, I ignored about half of it. But let's not be that way. Let's normalize kindness, being helpful, and being empathetic towards others.”
The episode is not isolated. On July 30, another Cuban reported an incident of racism in a supermarket in Spain where a woman told her, "you're in my country." And in August 2025, a Cuban creator in Spain pointed out that comments like "if you don't like it, go back to your country" are not cultural debate but xenophobia.
These testimonials fit into a well-established trend on TikTok: Cuban emigrants in Spain who document their everyday experiences of integration and, in some cases, hostile treatment. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics of Spain, at the beginning of 2024, approximately 223,532 people born in Cuba were residing in the country, and it is estimated that between 26,900 and more than 35,200 additional Cubans arrived during 2025, making Spain the main European destination for Cuban emigration.
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