[downvoteme1]

How was the cab experience in general in Spain before the influx of Uber and other tide sharing services.

Was it like the you could fail a can and it would take you where you wanted to go for a reasonable fare or would cabbie in general cancel rides, ask for more fare than the allowable maximum etc.

[dasv]

It was pretty good, most taxi drivers were self employed but associated to a guild that you could call to request a ride. The prices were set by law and there are enough taxis that flagging down one near a city center was pretty quick, and there are established taxi stops where there is always a queue of taxis waiting. Now there are taxi apps but if you are traveling it's a bit of a mess because they are usually only city wide and you need to figure out which one to download.

In fact, it is usually cheaper to take a taxi instead of Uber or Cabify if there is the slightest amount of demand pricing in action. The Cabify app also is able to request rides from taxis alongside their own service, but I suspect this is for regulatory compliance.

In my opinion, the success of ridesharing apps in Spain is due to knowing upfront how much the trip is going to cost (handy outside your hometown, some less honest taxi drivers would take the, ahem, touristic route, anyway taxi apps offer upfront price now as well) and clean vehicles with well dressed drivers that defer to the passenger. The rude, sweaty taxi driver chain smoking and blasting right wing radio stereotype is still very prevalent in the Spanish collective memory...