BLOG: Spanish shower turn-off

My family and I have a long history going back to the 1960s of horror tales of aquatic disasters here and today’s effort ranked well up there with the worst.

Tired and jetlagged, I took to the bathroom of our central Barcelona hotel, turned on the shower and stepped inside.

I quickly discovered several facts, primarily that the floor was so slippery that Torvill and Dean would have had trouble handling it. But then came the curtain from hell. The shower head was positioned close to the front of the cubicle and, as a result, as soon as you got wet, the curtain assumed a magnetic attraction to your body and attemped to wrap you in its clammy embrace.

I don’t know if you have ever tried to wash with one hand  while fending off the amorous advances of a shower curtain with the other, but it’s akin to standing on one leg and rubbing the top of your head - impossible.

 This was the latest in a series of shower-related incidents over the years. The finest was in a several-starred hotel in Santiago, which suffered from an unfortunate water pressure problem.

I was enjoying much-needed ablutions, when suddenly, the pressure ramped up several notches and the (flexible) shower head took off. It directed a jet stream out of the shower, across the room through the open door and hit the bedroom door, causing my wife to stick her head in and inquire who was washing what. 

Pressure was also the key to the hilarious incident in a pilgrim albergue in Galicia where the two showers in the mens faced each other across the communal bathroom. I was using what we will call shower A while another guest was using shower B when the pressure ramped up.

 Quick as a flash, shower head A, loosely hanging on a bracket in the wall, raised itself and began showering pilgrim B while his head did the same and showered me. What followed was a live water show as jets cascaded round the room in response to pressure changes before we both grabbed towels and bailed out as things got out of hand.

 But it’s not just showers that cause so much household grief here. Sewage disposal is also a very dodgy art form, as the smells will testify.

The problem is that the breather pipe that must legally be used in Australia, the US and British systems to eliminate septic smells in the house, is unknown here.

 My American friend, Rebekah, who runs a pilgrim albergue in Moratinos in Leon, decided to have her bathroom renovated by a local craftsman.

When the new piping and other facilities were unveiled, she noticed the lack of a breather pipe (known as a chimney in the US) and enquired where it was.

 As she explained its uses to the plumber, he took it all in, and grinned sheepishly.

‘‘That sounds like a great idea, senora,’’ he replied. ‘‘But here in Spain we open the window!’’

Ian Harrison is a former Illawarra Mercury journalist enjoying the sunny side of life in Spain.