Surely most of the citizens still did not notice it. Telephone booths have practically disappeared from the center of Barcelona. From corners as main as Plaza Catalunya, Paseo de Grà cia, La Rambla… Come on, well yes, more than one will say. And they also removed them from Pelai street, from Paral lel avenue, from Rambla de Catalunya…
And in those enclaves where these handy gadgets were erected, once so commonplace, some recently installed tiles, of a slightly lighter color, can hardly be sensed. The photographs taken to illustrate this information were taken in the Sant Andreu neighbourhood, on Avenida Meridiana, on the side of Gran Via that already borders on l’Hospitalet de Llobregat.
At this time, as Telefónica sources detail, the city has 166 cabins, and the rest of the province another 95. The expected dismantling operation is several months behind schedule. The idea was that more or less at the beginning of the year there would be no trace of them. The telecommunications company, however, has been speeding up work in recent weeks. At the beginning of 2021, Spain added up to 14,824 cabins. Of all of them, 2,413 were in Catalonia, 1,267 in the Barcelona regions and some 475 in Barcelona itself.
And a careful walk up and down shows that most of the booths in the Catalan capital are in the neighborhoods, and that in fact very few still work. Many of them simply swallow the coins, as they did so many times when you couldn’t find any more coins in your pocket. In fact, as these elements so characteristic of the urban landscape began to lose their prominence, their functions also changed, they began to become improvised supports for advertisements, the new totems of a lot of urban artists, informal bars where you can leave a can. empty beer…
In this way, here we find large-circulation political, commercial and advertising posters and others of an artisan nature of the style I am a painter or arquilo avitacio, many tags defaced with markers, large graffiti paintings made with aerosols and also many stickers, including large banks of fish-shaped stickers, for example, and also a lot of stanzas planted there – the best, without a doubt, the one that says as soon as I saw that it didn’t sound, I knew immediately that it was you–… Many now feel a bit orphans.
Other citizens, actually many more, understand that most of the booths became filthy supports that dominate the public space, neighbors who breathe a sigh of relief as these devices say their last goodbye. In particularly busy corners such as La Rambla, the retirement of the booths meant a little oxygenation of the place.
Since January 1 of last year, Telefónica is not obliged to provide this service. Hence the dismantling of the booths. Previously, every population of more than a thousand inhabitants had to have at least one, and from then on another every 3,000 souls. It was considered a right and an essential public service to have a cabin.
