Spain is a nation of apartment dwellers. More than 64 percent of the population lives in flats or apartments, second in the EU after Latvia (65.9 percent.)
Spanish homes are generally known for being pretty small. Often you can have the sensation that you’re living on top of one another, and you can hear every cough, laugh, TV set, argument (or worse) from your neighbours echoing through the building.
They’re also usually quite dark and have long corridors running through the middle of the property. Then there’s the quirky stuff that baffles foreigners when they move here.
For example, you may have noticed that many Spanish properties tend to have the light switches outside the bathroom.
One American TikToker certainly did, and his reaction video to this curious Spanish custom went viral in the Spanish press. “Don’t get me wrong, I f*cking love Spain,” he said, “I wouldn’t go back to the United States for a million dollars.”
“One complaint though,” he went on to say, “there’s the bathroom… that’s the light for the bathroom,” he said, pointing out the lights switch mounted on the wall…outside the bathroom.
Most people would argue that this isn’t an ideal setup, as your partner, flatmate or naughty 10 year old could easily leave you in the dark when you’re taking a shower or in the middle of doing your business.
Why do many bathrooms in Spain have the light switch outside?
Reading around Spanish interior design and architectural sites, it seems that a lot of it comes down to size and safety regulations.
If you’ve lived in a typically tiny Spanish apartment before, you’ll know that the bathrooms can be seriously small – at times for taller people sitting down on the toilet means their knees might be up against the sink or even the door.
Where light switches come into this is that building regulations in Spain require that they are mounted at a minimum distance of 1 metre from water sources like the taps, shower or bath.
This means that in smaller bathrooms, the only way to move the switches as far away as possible from these places is to place them outside the room.
It also partly explains why some kitchens in Spain also have light switches outside, to increase the distance between water and electricity sources and therefore reduce the risk of electrocution.
READ ALSO: Why do so many Spanish homes have ‘popcorn’ textured walls?
Many countries in Europe have similar electrical safety regulations. However, sometimes it’s also done for convenience and to save on measuring work or installing a light switch on a tiled wall.
In countries like the UK where it’s more common to have the light switch inside the bathroom, these are almost always on pulley chords or strings for safety reasons, or the bathroom is big enough to have it away from the water source.
These sorts of lights switches seem to be rare in Spain, with the vast majority being the wall-mounted rocker switch, something that makes the likelihood of electrocution far greater and explains why they’re installed outside the bathroom itself.
READ ALSO:
Please whitelist us to continue reading.
Member comments