Barcelona, Spain
Font de Canaletes, Barcelona
Barcelona's wishing tradition asks you to take something rather than give something. At the top of La Rambla stands a modest iron drinking fountain, easy to walk past, painted dark and topped with four small lamps. Drink from it, the city says, and you will come back.
A fountain, a newspaper and a football club
The fountain dates from the late nineteenth century and takes its name from the Canaletes water conduits that once supplied this end of the street. For most of its life it was simply where you drank.
Its second life is journalistic. The offices of a sports newspaper stood nearby, and before radio and television made results instant, the paper posted match scores on a board by the fountain. People gathered to read them and stayed to argue, and the corner acquired a reputation as the place where football opinion in Barcelona was manufactured.
The gathering habit never stopped. FC Barcelona supporters still converge on Canaletes to celebrate titles, and on a good night the fountain disappears entirely inside the crowd.
The promise
The superstition is simple and has no ceremony attached: drink the water and you will return to the city. There is no coin, no phrase to say, no shoulder to throw over.
It belongs to a family of return-promises found all over Europe — rub the boar in Florence, touch the bronze in Prague, throw over your shoulder in Rome. What they share is that the wish is not for a thing but for a repetition. You are not asking for luck. You are asking to be here again.
La Rambla around it
The fountain marks the top of La Rambla, at the Plaça de Catalunya end, which is the busiest pedestrian stretch in the city. It is also, frankly, where visitors are most likely to be pickpocketed, and the moment you lean down to drink is exactly the moment somebody would choose.
Keep a hand on your bag. That is not folklore; it is the most useful sentence in this guide.
If you go
The fountain is a two-minute walk from Plaça de Catalunya, on the right-hand side walking down. It is unmarked apart from a small plaque and is genuinely easy to miss.
The water is drinkable and cold. If you would rather not put your mouth to a public spout, cupping a hand under it is accepted locally as sufficient — the promise, people will tell you, is not fussy.
In short
- Where
- Top of La Rambla, near Plaça de Catalunya
- Dates from
- The late nineteenth century
- The ritual
- Drink the water
- Known for
- FC Barcelona title celebrations
Questions people ask
- Do you throw a coin into the Font de Canaletes?
- No. The Barcelona tradition is to drink from it. There is no coin ritual attached to this fountain.
- Is the water safe to drink?
- Yes, it is a public drinking fountain on the city supply.
Keep reading
Central Park, New York, United States
Bethesda Fountain, New York
An angel blessing the water, commissioned to celebrate the arrival of clean water in a city that had been dying of the lack of it.
Yucatán, Mexico
The Sacred Cenote, Chichén Itzá
A sixty-metre sinkhole that the Maya filled with gold, jade and incense to reach Chaac. The most serious offering site in this guide — and the one you must not touch.
Kyoto, Japan
Otowa Waterfall, Kiyomizu-dera
Three streams of the same spring, each promising something different. You are expected to choose one — taking all three is greed.
Make a wish now
eFountain is a wishing fountain that lives on the internet. Toss a coin, make a wish — it is never published. Your first coin is free.
Go to the fountain