Looby, who I’d call the Lancaster Proust, if Proust hadn’t been so bloody boring, says “I’ve never been to Spain but I’ve always thought they must have incredibly wide pavements, given the behaviour of Spaniards in England.”
In fact they are usually incredibly small, or filled with motorbikes, cars and other impedimenta which have the same effect.
A few years in Gracia, Barcelona someone complained about cars parking on pavements/sidewalks along its narrow streets, and the council’s response was to put bollards along them so that they were just as useless to pedestrians as when cars were parked on them.
I believe that some vague concept of their purpose exists, but I don’t know what it is, unless it’s merely a way of signalling that you’re in a town, which is I think what the one pictured is designed to do.
How on earth do wheelchair users survive?
Similar posts
- Spanish pavements
They’re not necessarily for - Badly parked
Mal aparcado posts photos of absurd and illegal parking. There are often so many cars and scooters parked on the pavements - Fuck Bicing
Being Barcelona Council’s corporativist scheme to marginalise private bike ownership and bike shops: 59euros is going round chaining random stuff to lampposts - The metro to Nou Barris
Pictures of houses and a - Vote for the Jerez pronoun party
I suppose that the use of “their” followed by “you” at the beginning of these parking fine instructions can be explained
“How on earth do wheelchair users survive?” – my guess is: with great difficulty. See also the number of stations, apt buildings etc with no lift access.
Breaking off for a minute from my interminable memoirs, I would only add that the picture is very much like pavements I have known in Lisbon, although a Portuguese speciality was to have inexplicable knee high black sheets of holed metal angled across the pavement at 45 degrees. I could only assume it was an amusing spectator sport for the sighted at the expense of the blind.