The ‘bouletoilet’

In 2022, both the allotment and «Nights at the allotment» were growing and enjoying a good health, with our healthy leisure and varied cultural offer bringing people together. And the one-time wasteland had become the meeting point we had dreamed of.

But then the PIBA —«Planes Integrales de Barrio» («Neighbourhood Integration plans»)— arrived, projects funded with Territorial Rebalancing Funds, whose aim is precisely that, although our requests were always turned down: a cultural centre, library, flat for emergency housing, study rooms…

Thanks to our collective efforts and hard work, we have come to realise that we don´t need anything the local Council has to offer, except a toilet. One of those cabins that the Council looks after and much in need for public, gardeners and the audience at «Nights at the allotment» and other events held there.

We agreed to the Council´s involvement in exchange for the toilet. We were unaware that «improving the area» consisted of a perimeter of cement and slabs on the land that we had tried to renaturalize, something which threatens our trees (huge pavements divide the area but don’t improve access). The nightmare reached a peak when they told us that the toilet was not possible. Indignation.

We organised a day of protest in April 2023 and decorated «their intervention» with flowers planted in toilet bowls. We turned the pavement into a colourful boulevard, our bouletoilet. The Council liked neither our sense of humour nor our art. And the bouletoilet lasted less than 24 hours.