Just thought I would give a heads up to anyone needing taxi's in Barcelona that are traveling with children. It is nearly impossible to flag a cab.
The drivers do not want to pick up anyone with chidren. It took a police officer to assist us and the officer had to threaten the driver with arrest if he did not take us to our hotel.
The cab driver repeatly screamed "no familia"!
Our children were standing on the streets with us for over an hour while literally a hundred cabs passed us by. Our children were not eating or having dripping ice cream coming from their hands. We were all well dressed and for some foolish reason, I tipped the driver anyway. Hopefully we set an example for the drivers that have developed this attitude and left us in a very perilous situation.

Wow! I have been to Barcelona many times, but this is the first time I heard of this issue. I was wondering how many children were in your party?

Hi!
I was traveling with a friend of mine who had 3 and I had 2. I was told that the laws in the city only allowed a total of 4 passengers, which was fine, so we were in need of 2 taxi's. 4 in one, 3 in the other. The police ended up flagging the taxi's for us and then had to threaten both drivers.
We had even seperated, she went on one street, I on another, since we thought they might be concerned or overwhelmed that we would insist on one cab.
Once she had the police assisting her, she had to come back to get us.
Wow, is exactly right. I was in total shock that this was what happened.

Really interesting. I have been helping folks on European boards (on several sites) for years and have never seen this complaint. We shall have to watch and see if this is a new trend.