  We discuss the octupole deformation properties of the recently proposed
Barcelona-Catania-Paris (BCP) energy density functionals for two sets of
isotopes, those of radium and barium, where it is believed that octupole
deformation plays a role in the description of the ground state. The analysis
is carried out in the mean field framework (Hartree- Fock- Bogoliubov
approximation) by using the axially symmetric octupole moment as a constraint.
The main ingredients entering the octupole collective Hamiltonian are evaluated
and the lowest lying octupole eigenstates are obtained. In this way we restore,
in an approximate way, the parity symmetry spontaneously broken by the mean
field and also incorporate octupole fluctuations around the ground state
solution. For each isotope the energy of the lowest lying $1^{-}$state and the
$B(E1)$ and $B(E3)$ transition probabilities have been computed and compared to
both the experimental data and the results obtained in the same framework with
the Gogny D1S interaction, which are used here as a well established benchmark.
Finally, the octupolarity of the configurations involved in the way down to
fission of $^{240}$Pu, which is strongly connected to the asymmetric fragment
mass distribution, is studied. We confirm with this thorough study the
suitability of the BCP functionals to describe octupole related phenomena.
