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SPAIN EXPLAINED

Why do some Spanish homes have bottles of water outside their door?

Many observant foreigners in Spain have been quick to pick up on this bizarre practice. What’s the reason behind bottles of water being left outside buildings and houses here?

Published: 15 March 2021 11:43 CET
Updated: 16 August 2023 15:33 CEST
Why do some Spanish homes have bottles of water outside their door?
Photos: Julio César Cerletti García, joaopms/Flickr

You may have picked up on this already or, now that you’ve been made aware of it, you’ll notice it on your next visit to Spain. 

Some buildings or houses in Spain have two or even more bottles of water placed at the property’s entrance in the street, usually strategically positioned on either side of the main door on the pavement. It’s also not uncommon to see bottles of water placed outside small shops and businesses.

In case you were wondering, it has nothing to do with Spain being a relatively hot country – it’s no selfless offering of H20 to passers-by or a way to keep the ground cool. 

It’s such a quirky sight that in 2018 a Reddit user posted a photo of a row of 5-litre bottles of water lined up on a residential road, asking “Spain. Why are there water bottles outside all the driveways and entrances?”.

The general consensus among Spanish commentators on the thread and other Spanish sources is that the practice is all about stopping cats and dogs from urinating on people’s doorways. 

Some claim that with cats the habit stops them from doing their business as they don’t want to ‘pollute’ clean water with their urine. 

There are also those that claim it has something to do with dogs and cats seeing their reflection in the water and being put off from the toilet break.

According to local daily La Gaceta de Salamanca, leaving bottles on building corners and entrances replaced the more dangerous tradition of sprinkling lye or sulphur on the walls and ground of homes and businesses in the Castilian city, but this was a huge health hazard that’s now been banned. 

So does the water bottle solution work? Well, some swear by it while others see it more as an old wife’s tale.

“We do not know if it is effective, but it is true that dogs can be scared because they see themselves reflected or because the sun causes a reflection on the water and, just like pigeons, it bothers them and they get frightened”, President of the Salamanca veterinary college Antonio Rubio told La Gaceta.

Others aren’t so convinced: “No scientific study has been carried out to check if it works but we know that it is not effective,” Vigo veterinarian Xiana Costas told her local daily El Faro de Vigo in northwestern Spain. 

Dog urine is the main reason why some Spaniards leave bottles of water outside of their buildings. Photo: Valery HACHE / AFP

“Probably at first a dog is put off peeing by the obstacle of the bottle but a more daring pooch will mark its territory no matter what. But I’ve never seen a dog that’s scared of a bottle.”

It’s not known whether this practice originated in Spain or somewhere else, but leaving bottles of water outside doorways or even tied to trees in communal gardens is also reportedly done in Italy, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and even Japan. 

In most of these countries street dogs and feral cats are blamed for pee stains left on walls and doorways, but in Spain it’s often dog owners who are held responsible for allowing their pets to mark their territory in the wrong place. 

If you are a dog owner in Spain the recommended thing to do is to spray their pee with water mixed with a bit of washing up liquid or vinegar.

Cleaning up these territorial markings is according to veterinarian Costas also the best way to prevent more pongy pee from appearing on walls and corners of Spanish buildings. 

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Member comments

  1. It’s just handy to have a bottle of water by the door to wash the pee off, rather than having to go back indoors to get some. There could also be a faint hope that the dog owner will use the water to clean off his dog’s pee to save you the bother!

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SPAIN EXPLAINED

Why does Spain have no nuclear weapons?

Despite a top secret project to build them during the dictatorship, Spaniards have never been keen on the idea of nuclear weapons, especially since the US accidentally dropped four nuclear bombs on Almería.

Published: 15 April 2024 16:36 CEST
Why does Spain have no nuclear weapons?

Spain isn’t part of the reduced group of nations that have nuclear weapons, which includes European neighbours the UK and France.

It has never tested nuclear weapons, does not manufacture them, nor has it bought them from nuclear allies who make them.

Spain is still a NATO member and doesn’t shy away from involving itself in foreign policy debates, often taking positions against the mainstream.

But it has still never joined the nuclear club nor have Spaniards ever really wanted to, even though former dictator Francisco Franco had different ideas (more on that below).

In fact, Spaniards seem to have an indifferent if not abnormally negative view of nukes, largely stemming from an accident by an American air force on Spanish soil in the 1960s.

READ ALSO: How important is nuclear power to Spain?

A 2018 study on state attitudes towards nuclear weapons concluded that Spain had “little to no interest in nuclear weapons.” Yet Spain still benefits from NATO’s so-called ‘nuclear umbrella’ defence and has nearby neighbours, including France and the United Kingdom, that are nuclear powers. It is also home to several American military bases.

In that sense, Spain balances a somewhat unique position of being pro-nuclear for other countries and as a broader defence deterrence at the global level, but not on Spanish territory because it knows that would not sit well with Spaniards.

But why is this? Why doesn’t Spain have nuclear weapons?

Anti-nuclear sentiment among Spaniards

According to an article for Institut Montaigne by Clara Portela, Professor of Political Science at the University of Valencia, the Spanish people are “sensitised on nuclear weapons, if not negatively disposed towards them.”

Much of it comes down to history and, in particular, an accident involving nuclear weapons on Spanish soil. As part of post-war defence and security agreements Spain made with the U.S, American nuclear weapons were kept on Spanish soil.

Spaniards weren’t keen on the idea. Portela notes that “their presence at the Torrejón base near Madrid was a controversial issue” among the public, but it was an accident in 1966 that really soured Spaniards to nuclear weapons after an American aircraft carrying a hydrogen bomb crashed and dropped the device in the waters near the town of Palomares off the coast of Almería.

READ ALSO: Ten of the best documentaries about Spain

The incident caused “one of the bombs to fall to the seabed and leak radioactivity” into the surrounding area, Portela states, something that would have no doubt hardened many Spaniard’s perceptions towards nuclear weapons, especially as the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was still in living memory for many.

A NATO-nuclear referendum

This scepticism towards nuclear arms was solidified twenty years later in a referendum on NATO membership. Though the government of the day campaigned for continued membership of the military alliance, it made it conditional on Spain also continuing as a non-nuclear power. A clause in the referendum consultation outlined this condition: “The prohibition to install, store or introduce nuclear weapons on Spanish soil will be maintained.”

Spaniards backed their continued, non-nuclear NATO membership by 13 percent.

A year later, in 1987, Spain formally signed the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), further cementing its non-nuclear stance.

And that was it — with this and the result of the referendum, Portela suggests that “the issue of nuclear weapons was all but archived. It hardly re-surfaced in public debates for decades.”

An atomic bomb of the type nicknamed “Little Boy” that was dropped by a US Army Air Force B-29 bomber in 1945 over Hiroshima, Japan. (Photo by LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIFIC LABORATORY / AFP)

The nuclear dictator?

Despite the Spanish public’s distrust of nuclear weapons, there was one Spaniard in particular who was quite keen on the idea: Franco.

In what may be one of the most terrifying historical ‘what ifs’ ever, the fascist dictator wanted to equip Spain with a nuclear arsenal, started a project to do so, and came very close to achieving it.

The ‘Islero Project’, as it was known, was top secret and lasted for several decades of scientific research until it was finally abandoned in the 1980s after his death.

Firstly, a brief consideration of the geopolitics of the time is worthwhile here, and it concerns the Americans again. When the Second World War ended in 1945, Spain immediately became isolated on the international stage owing to its support for Nazi Germany and fascist Spain. It was excluded from the UN and shunned as a real player in international relations.

As the Cold War and threat of nuclear annihilation grew throughout the 1950s, Franco’s fierce anti-communism combined with the strategic geographical positioning of Spain led the U.S. to form closer ties with the dictatorship, promising financial aid and image rehabilitation in return for allowing American military bases in Spain.

READ ALSO: Where are the US’s military bases in Spain and why are they there?

The Junta de Energía Nuclear was created in 1951, undertaking research and atomic energy development more broadly, and it sent promising researchers to study in the U.S. When they returned, the Islero project continued in secret.

Rather bizarrely, it was the accident at Palomares years later that actually gave the scientists the key to designing an atomic bomb. Unconvinced by the American’s explanations for the debacle, the Spaniards working on plans discovered the Ulam-Teller method, which was fundamental to the development of the thermonuclear bomb or H-bomb.

However, the project was then frozen by Franco himself because he feared the United States would discover that Spain was trying to develop its own atomic bomb and impose economic sanctions.

After Franco’s death in 1975, Spanish scientists secretly restarted the project, but in 1982 the new Socialist government discovered the plans and disbanded the project. By 1987 the González government announced Spain’s accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty NPT and the issue has rarely even come up as an issue since then.

And despite that, Spain is a NATO member, regularly attends the G20, and often plays a leading role on the global stage. Certain elements of the dictatorship had eyes on building a nuclear arsenal, but it never happened. Franco ultimately worried about the economic repercussions of being discovered, and Spaniards were themselves sceptical about the idea based on the experience in Palomares.

In terms of nuclear weapons, Spain is what Portela describes as a ‘de-proliferation’ state – in other words, a country that aspired to have nuclear bombs but reversed it.

It doesn’t look like changing anytime soon either. A survey in 2021 showed that Spain had the highest level of support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, with a massive 89 percent majority.

READ ALSO: Why is Spain not in the G20 (but is always invited)?

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