In the world there are many pools that are well worth a bath. To immerse yourself in these aquatic paradises is to do so in scenes of play and joy. And it is that if there is a postcard image of summer, both on the beach and in the mountains, it is the pool.
There was a time when, as in John Cheever’s story The Swimmer, you could swim across the country from pool to pool. However, this summer the drought has dried up many in Spain, although there are still enough: indoor swimming pools, a vestige of other times; pools suspended 10, 20, 30 or more meters above the ground that make you feel in seventh heaven; pools surrounded by vineyards or palm trees; small oases of dryland towns; even night pools, where at night the glances dance as in The Great Gatsby.
In the pools the charm of summer love between boys and girls, boys and boys, girls and girls and all the possible combinations of people looking at each other at the edge of the water, dreaming of liquid and superficial love floats like nowhere else.
Etymologically, the word pool, says the RAE, comes from the Latin “pool”, which derives from “pisces”, fish. At first, “swimming pool” was defined as “pond that is usually made in gardens to catch fish”, until in 1925 the meaning “pond for bathing people” was added.
It is difficult to determine which was the first swimming pool in history. The first public water tank in the world was built two thousand years before Christ in Monhenjo-Daro, on the banks of the Indus River, in present-day Pakistan. For its part, the Encyclopedia Britannica points out that the first heated swimming pool appeared in the 1st century BC, thanks to the Roman Gaius Maecenas, political adviser to Augustus.
In Spain, the Niagara Baths, inaugurated in 1879 in Madrid, were one of the first to open. In Barcelona, ??the Escullera, the swimming pool of the Club Natació Barcelona, ??was the first heated and covered pool in Spain (1921), although the one in Sabadell was earlier. However, the first wave of residential public swimming pools had to wait until the 1960s.
Since then, the swimming pools have been building a non-verbal language: the book on the hammock, the children who splash more than anyone else, the teenagers who put their stomachs full of hormones, the tattoos, the strident sunglasses and the sun glued to the high in the sky Everything serves to change the chip, because if the pools invite you to something, it is to smile and chat about the divine and the human.
The fact that bathers seen through the water seem to blend together like watercolors led pop art painter David Hockney to dedicate part of his work to California’s water and light festivals. And the same can be said of Alex Proba, an artist who paints the bottom of swimming pools to make them works of art.
This report shows several pools built by Ricardo Bofill (such as the Red Wall, in Calpe, Alicante), paradisiacal pools in Mallorca and Ibiza, some small inland oceans scattered around the world and all kinds of aquatic refuges full of rainbow specks.
From Barcelona to Santorini, passing through the Alps and the Maldives, swimming pools are the closest thing to paradise on earth during the summer, just behind the sea. In fact, they are the watchword of many dream homes and the cover letter of some hotel chains.
This is the case of The Aficionados, an emporium of international establishments for travelers seeking to merge luxury, design and authenticity. In the opinion of Iain Ainsworth, the founder and CEO, there are “destination pools” that attract like a magnet. “The pool is often the hotel’s favorite and sensational Instagram photo,” admits this Londoner. “There must be drama beyond the swimsuit or bikini: a sense of theatricality that turns the humble dip into an experience,” he adds after commenting that his group is focused on making their pools more sustainable.
In Spain in 2022 there were a total of 1,266,000 swimming pools, one for every 37 inhabitants, according to cadastre data. Taking as average a pool of four by eight meters and 48,000 liters of capacity, filling all these pools requires 60.77 cubic hectometres of water, which is equivalent to 0.1% of the capacity of the reservoirs (56,136 Hm3) and 2 .6% of the consumption of Spanish households (around 133 liters per person and year in 2020, according to the INE).
However, the sector’s employers’ association points out that currently swimming pools have a much lower overall water consumption than years ago, due to the fact that the old practice of annual emptying-filling is now residual, thanks to the water treatments that are carried out .
The pools that still have the water from the previous year or those that are in places that can afford it, will once again be an oasis of freshness this summer on hot days.
