Snippets from Spain

Stepping Around the Poop on Madrid's Streets

(Since I’m traveling throughout March and won’t have much time to write, I’ve recycled some of the posts from 2023 and pre-Substack. They’ll be new to many of you faithful, kind readers.)

Walking thirty steps from our building to the Plaza de Olavide in Madrid, I watched a dog owner ignore a pile of dog-do close to his feet. Tempering my voice, I asked, “Y el popo?” (“And the poop?”) He answered me, “It’s not from my dog.” I was more chagrined that he answered me in English than accusing him of not picking up his dog’s feces.

When I described the incident to a Spanish friend, he told me the dog owner responded in English because he recognized me as a foreigner. I used “popo,” the term used in Colombia, whereas the correct reasonably polite word in Spain is “caca.” My friend tactfully didn’t mention that my accent gave me away as a gringa.

Campaigns to remind people to pick up. "Use the bags. Your dog is not the one responsible."

Poop in the Plaza, on the sidewalks, and right smack in front of our building infuriates me. Pick it up! I’m not the only one who’s mad watching every step. National surveys have demonstrated that “abandoned excrement,” as some newspapers call it, in public places is the top complaint about quality of neighborhood life. Fines between 300 and 3,000 Euros ($330 and $3300) in Madrid haven’t helped. In 2019, the city penalized only forty-six people. I can count forty-six piles in one afternoon. Besides, most people don’t pay.

Pick up your dog's poop.

In Madrid, in 2013, residents of one district had had enough of that crap. The municipality initiated a campaign, La caca teledirigida (Remote-controlled poop). The individual who forgot to pick up the dog’s doings received it in a box on the doorstep less than forty-eight hours after the slip of mind. Neighbors loved the new practice, but it didn’t even last a month.

The morning I wrote this snippet, my husband, Fabio, saw a dog leave its droppings in front of our apartment building. No owner in sight. He followed the dog to the plaza watching it pee on two trees along the way. He found the owner and asked her to pick up her dog’s mess. She did. It’s easy not to know what her dog is doing if she’s half a block away conversing with her friends. Fabio says he’s become the Poop Police because he doesn’t hesitate to go after these people who are too busy chatting to notice their dog’s activities.

One Madrid district Office of Cleanliness took matters into their own hands. Anyone seen walking away from his/her dog’s turds in a public space had to show up at a municipal office to receive a time and date for community service. A city official gave the dog owner gloves, a vest, boots, and instructions on where to pick up the cart, broom, dustpan, and bags and start picking up poop.

A new high tech method to reduce dog waste on the streets has demanded owner’s cooperation. In Madrid and seventy-eight municipalities, twenty-three more than 2022, dog owners were required to take their dog to a veterinarian for a blood or saliva sample and register the pet’s DNA in a canine registry. In some communities, if owners received the service in a certain period, they paid only 10 Euros for it. If they missed the deadline, they forked out thirty-five. The system allowed owners to find their lost or stolen dogs and city workers to fine the guilty party who didn’t do their own waste management. I don’t see much evidence that this practice has been effective.

City government's pleas to encourage people to pick it up; Fine of 75 to 50 Euros

Fabio and I savor sitting in the Plaza de Olavide to read, chat, have a glass of beer or wine and eat chips, watch the children playing and the adolescents flirting, and enjoy the dogs roughhousing. Relaxing on the bench fills us with happiness until we see a pile of poo or get a whiff of dog urine. Washing away urine with water and vinegar is also a law in Madrid but adhered to even less than picking up piles. I’ve never witnessed anyone in the plaza rinsing their dog’s pee off a wall, bench leg, swing set, or tree trunk. On a summer day, the smell almost sends us back inside.

Remember to get bags and a bottle with vinager.

I enjoy so much of Madrid but dog feces in public spaces I can’t abide. I’ll ask owners about the caca using the correct word, so I don’t sound quite so much like a self-righteous foreigner. If that doesn’t work, I may get a chance to practice my growing vocabulary of swear words.