Washbasins on the Rambla

The Barcelona City Council, according to what the people at the Wax Museum tell me, plans to install urinals on La Rambla. Urinals are useful because, sometimes, while working as a tourist or a passerby, you feel like going to the restroom, and it's not about entering bars to order a cortado or a water (something quick, that you didn't really want) just so they let you use it. Some people go to a bar's restroom and don't consume anything, which, with all the reason in the world, annoys the waiters, who are not there to cover the shortcomings of politicians (waiters are there for us to forget them). In shopping centers, now, there are clean and modern restrooms with baby changing facilities. Anyone who has cared for babies will know what a blessing that is.

The restrooms that the City Council plans to install are mobile, from the Toi Toi brand. The ones they put up for popular races, concerts, or in construction sites for bricklayers. In some European cities, like Amsterdam, I've seen them, for men, outdoors. They are a cheap solution, but perhaps it's a solution that would have made Gaudí, if he were to raise his head, throw himself onto the Trambaix. Gaudí, of course, foresaw urinals on La Rambla. If you take the time to look for them, you will be fascinated. They were mixed. On the left, there was the "ladies' toilet," which had a "waiting room." On the right, the "gentlemen's toilet," which had no waiting room, but was double. At the front, and this is the best part, were the florists. And above the flowers, which is what the passerby would see, because the restrooms would be entered from the sides, there would be wrought iron and a clock.

I understand that today this idea proposed by Gaudí cannot be carried out, although I think it's very good. But I also understand that on La Rambla, right now, all that's missing are some blue portable toilets. I don't know if at this point the Toi Toi company, which is not to blame, is working on a design with a bit of wrought iron on the roof and some trencadís on the door, to make it, even with plastic, a little bit modernist.