There is a retired doctor in Valencia, Spain, who is my newest hero. Dr. Carlos San Juan de Laorden, 78, a retired surgeon, got completely fed up with banks that were happy to hold onto all his pension money and savings, but had closed all their branch offices and forced all their customers to communicate with them via apps if they wanted anything back.

Or rather I should say attempt to communicate via apps because it never worked. And at the ATM, “There was a sign saying that they would only see customers with appointments, but when you called the number, nobody picked up the phone,” according to a report in the English-language version of Spain’s El Pais.

Sometimes, Dr. Laorden was told, “Come with a family member and everything will go faster” or “Get your children to do it for you.” Other times, he was advised, “You need to start learning computer skills.”

What if you don’t have any children? Or worse, what if you do, but they are more like the son of Brooke Astor, a wealthy millionairess who gave away millions to charity during her life, but at the end turned out to have been defrauded by her own son?

Dr. Laorden’s situation was made worse by the fact that he has Parkinson’s disease— which had forced him into early retirement, since very few people want a surgeon with shaking hands — and he therefore had trouble pushing buttons and manipulating apps. But some of his friends just plain had trouble with apps, while others couldn’t afford a smart phone. And why should they have to put up with such treatment anyway?

The way Dr. Laorden saw it, not only were the banks making it difficult for people to access their own money, but when they closed down offices and eliminated all in-person services, they weren’t just reaping the savings——they were also making their customers do all the work. “The coronavirus has been a perfect excuse for banks and others to force people to stay away and act like robots, while also making their clients do the work that bank employees used to do,” he told The New York Times.

“What I am respectfully asking for,” he said, “is that if banks are making billions, and if we rescued them with taxpayers’ money (a few years ago) when things went badly for them, then it shouldn’t be hard for them to offer us some personal customer care.”

What the good doctor found most infuriating was the condescending implication that he just wasn’t smart enough for modern life. He started a petition — online at Change.org — saying “I may be old, but I’m not an idiot!” and demanding more human customer service from the banks.

In three weeks, the petition had gone viral on Twitter. In two months, it had gathered more than 600,000 signatures (and would surely have gathered many more if everyone who agreed with it was also online).

He got the attention of local media and eventually the banks and the government. This past February, Spain’s economic ministry in Madrid invited Dr. Laorden to attend the signing of an agreement with Spanish banks that they will offer more and better customer services to Spain’s senior citizens (whose pensions keep those very banks solvent).

According to Raphael Minder, who reported this story for The Times, the doctor “is no Luddite” (as if there were anything wrong with that). “For this article, he used WhatsApp and Skype. But he believes older adults should not pay the price for an online transition that has allowed banks and other institutions to make significant staff cuts and other savings.”

My own mother was treated to some of this nonsense not long ago here in the good old USA. She wanted to call up her bank to straighten out some confusion, but no one would even talk to her over the phone until she had responded to a cell-phone text message.

Needless to say, my mother had never heard of text messaging, let alone owned a phone that could do that. Her other option, they said, was to come in in person. This being in the depths of the pre-vaccine pandemic, we quickly vetoed that suggestion.

In the end, my mother’s only recourse was to withdraw all her money from that bank and give it to a bank that actually wanted her business.

I say, more power to Dr. Carlos San Juan de Laorden. I will be delighted to sign his petition that “I’m Just Old, I’m Not An Idiot.” In fact, I’m thinking of going him one better——a petition of my own, saying “Yo, Bankers! We’re not the idiots here. You Are!”