No Tirar Papeles: Spanish public toilets

I identify as male. This means that in a piece describing Spanish public toilets I face an obvious problem. I wouldn't usually consider entering about 50% of the facilities on offer. I have had to extrapolate. That said the other day, in a department store, I went into the toilets, said hello to the woman cleaner, and wondered about the absence of urinals. I did what I needed to do, and while washing my hands, the cleaner drew my attention to the door, well to the pictogram on the door. A tiny stick-figure woman, skirt barely discernible. It hadn't clicked, I'd got the wrong room. I apologised. My quips about kilts or zaraguelles - those traditional baggy culotte trousers - fell on deaf ears.

Public conveniences in Spain are like oases in the desert. You see one in the distance from time to time but they're often a mirage. Generally public toilets are locked except for special events. There are also a few of those tardis like plastic cabins on street corners, the ones with curved doors that self disinfect and swallow a lot of coins before letting you in. A useful option is the toilets in public buildings like libraries, town halls and cemeteries. Their availability is limited by the opening hours of the building or facility but they are usually clean and well stocked. A relatively recent innovation, for fiestas and events, are the temporary portaloos dotted around the streets. Sometimes there are even big caravan like toilet trailers. I reckon there must have been some legislative change because, in pre portaloo times, the only option was either a dark alley, blatant exhibitonism or any nearby bar.

In effect it's the bars that provide the network of public conveniences. You don't spend a penny, you buy a coffee or a beer. Drinks are the currency of relief. Bar and restaurant type businesses must provide toilets. You can usually guess, from the state of the bar, what the toilets are going to be like. I suppose if you've chosen a bar with character there is always the option of drinking so much that you don't really care what the aseos, baños or servicios have to offer. Remember that I identify as male, we have the advantage of distance. I know some women who avoid some bars specifically because of the state of their toilets.

Contrast this with the UK, where municipal toilets were once everywhere but, as with all essential services in the UK, they have suffered cut after cut to save money. Spain, by contrast, never had a sprawling network of public conveniences, preferring a combination of cafés, bars, and sometimes the wall behind the municipal dustbins. 

Most restaurants and cafes, even if they are quite big, do not have multiple toilets. There is usually one room for men, another for women and one of them will probably double as the disability toilet. Sometimes it's just one toilet for everybody. Most have straightforward symbols to help you choose the right one though there are plenty of confusing ones too - a local restaurant uses the sun and the moon. I never know which is which. The rows of urinals or a series of stalls aren't uncommon in places like motorway service stations, shopping centres or cinemas but they are definitely outnumbered by the single person facility. It's noticeable that men often choose stalls over urinals even when the urinal would do perfectly well for the task in hand but they only take privacy so far and seem loathe to use the door locks. A charming experiment in trust and vulnerability. Disability toilets are legally required but they often double as storage and are obviously woefully inadequate for the majority of disabilities.

The quality of toilets is a lottery. Some are spotless, others might double as horror sets. Toilet paper is generally available — but not guaranteed. And washhandbasins can come in various states of disrepair. Then there’s the cultural gem that shocks every Briton: a little basket next to the toilet for your used paper. Apparently Spain’s plumbing can't cope with anything more solid than natural products. It may be pragmatic but it's pretty revolting to anyone accustomed to just flushing.

Squat toilets, once a rural staple, have mostly vanished over the last twenty years. Now you get the seated option, the modern standard. The quirkily designed toilets, the ones where you have to manoeuvre around the door to get in, the ones where the roofs are so low that you bang your head even when seated, the ones with high cisterns and pull chains, the ones with broken cisterns and no seat and even the ones with several different floor levels, have largely gone. Every now and again you'll encounter one, just to remind you of times when a beer cost 100 pesetas and only men went in bars. 

So, whenever I'm far from home and nature calls I presume that things will be fine, they usually are. Sometimes though the price of relief is a hastily ordered café cortado as one sprints past the bar heading for the promised land. Sometimes I'm puzzled by various pictograms and those symbols with arrows and crosses that I've never mastered. There are times when the fiestas fill the streets and the difficult decision has to be made between the dark interior of a portaloo, which is unlikely to have been treated with care and respect, or the queue outside the toilet in the bar which will itself, almost certainly, be in a bad way - paddling pool bad - after so much foot traffic. You soon learn to never abandon a museum or art gallery without making a "just in case" visit to their gleaming facilities.