Barcelona's fountain gatherings

A fontada is a Barcelona street gathering around a fountain, to dance, drink and eat. They began around the 19th century, when the city was less centralised than it is today, when nobody looked after the natural surroundings, there were no swimming pools everywhere, and shallow water was usually badly polluted. It showed most in summer — and that is the key to the fontades: the need to escape the heat.

Today there are cheap pools, gyms with a pool included, even public swimming pools. But, hard as it is to believe, Barcelona has not always been a place to hide from the heat. In the early 19th century there were few ways to cool down in summer: what is now Ciutat Vella had almost no pools, and that is precisely where most people in Barcelona lived, crowded together.

A working swimming pool in summer was in fact a privilege reserved for modern places — clubs, or buildings with room for one. So people, with no affordable alternative, ended up using the natural springs on the Montjuïc hillside to fight the heat. That is how the fontades were born. From family get-togethers to romantic dates, they became a way of beating the heat and socialising at the same time.

Even so, fontades are not the only social ritual built around water: people have gathered around springs since ancient times, and city fountains have always been meeting places. In a Barcelona without pools or clean beaches, pure mountain water was until very recently the only way for its people to forget the heat of the city for a moment and enjoy a summer dip.