Perseverance and Resilience

Perseverance and Resilience

27 January 2026

On these islands, resilience and perseverance are not abstract virtues; they are survival skills. You only realize how many of them you have built up when you go to live abroad. Things tend to go relatively easily for us there, not because life elsewhere is simpler, but because we have spent years struggling against systems that quietly train you to endure.

An example. Yesterday, after gathering information from fellow citizens via social media, I stood in line for an hour to pay road tax. I had already heard that after mid‑next month, I will have to stand in line again to collect the license plate myself. It is unclear whether one can wait until mid‑February and then do everything in one go. From the government itself, I could hardly find any information. Nobody is happy about it. Some people were lucky and had to wait less long. So it is clear that you cannot get anywhere online. That procedure simply does not exist.

Since the beginning of January, I have been trying to arrange my sales tax online. Suddenly, I could no longer log in to my tax office account. I tried everything, including a reset. I called the free phone number many times. There were always more than ten people ahead of me, and I never got through. I also sent several emails asking for help. I received an automatic reply, but no actual assistance.

Yesterday and today, I drove to the infamous, renovated tax office. What immediately stands out is that almost all parking spaces are reserved for the civil servants who work there. The client—the citizen who comes to bring his money and pay his taxes—is left to try to find a parking space much farther away.

I rest my case on organizational psychology and quality management. From conversations, I picked up the following: the way parking spaces are allocated already says everything about service culture. Where management and staff reserve the best parking spaces for themselves, they signal—without saying a word—that the public they serve comes second. I have seen this principle described in textbooks, but I have never seen it illustrated so literally.

I will make another attempt to access my account to fulfill my civic duty. Mind you, in this context, people want to start a discussion about letting civil servants work less for the same pay. For an outsider, that proposal might sound progressive. For those who have just spent hours in line to hand over their own money, it sounds almost surreal.

Miguel Goede