If you go to the pool and find all the sunbeds have towels on and you have nowhere to sit, what do you do?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 23 Jul, 2023
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Although you are expected to know the law, as foreigner it is difficult to understand every quirky detail of the local laws. Sometimes having the law on your side, is simply not enough. Especially if you have to explain your actions to a grumpy well built guy who is being backed up by his local bunch of good friends.
Personally I think that you have two options.
- Bring the towels to the staff and say that someone seems to have forgotten their towels.
- You just apply reciprocity. They are anti-social, you are anti-social. Which means that you just throw away their towels and when asked where the towels are, just blame someone imaginary, like the other person that walked away with the towels.
You have bumped into one of the Spanish habits. In Spain there are a lot of people that wake up early just to leave their things at the beach/pool and then go back to bed. It’s like planting a flag saying “hey, this is my territory and you should keep away”. I hate this behaviour of my fellow countrymen.
What to do? At the beach, there is a recent law that forbids doing this. The pools are different though because they are private spaces. The rule of thumb should be: if there’s no space available, wait 5 minutes and remove one of the towels that is not wet (because it could show you that it is in use) and has nothing more in the surroundings, like bags, flip-flops, etc. Leave the towel over other not-really-busy sunbed.
This won’t stand surety for not to discuss with the towel owner, but decreases the chances. Even at the beach, I’ve had discussions where the law has assisted me.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘