Harder and colder: the new season of 'La travessa' arrives on 3Cat, now in the lands of Ponent
The third edition consists of a route of more than 300 kilometers from the Ebro Delta to the Aran Valley.
BarcelonaThis Thursday, the adventure show hosted by Laura Escanes kicks off again. The third season, The journey: Ponent expeditionpromises to be the toughest and most extreme of all, requiring contestants to overcome challenges of endurance, agility, and personal growth to stay in the competition. In this edition, the pairs will start in the Ebro Delta and finish on the peaks of the Vall d'Aran, in a race against time that will push them to their limits.
Expectations for this new season are very high, as evidenced by the record-breaking casting call: more than 2,000 couples have signed up, from which ten have been selected to attempt to cross the finish line first and win the prize of 20,000 euros. Last year, the winning duo was the Tortosa duo, formed by Cirera and Tafalla, and this year, eleven episodes will reveal which two contestants will make it to the Olympus of the program. Along the way, they will face challenges they've already seen from previous editions and new ones, such as hanging from the Tortosa bridge or climbing mountain passes on the day of a heavy snowfall. But above all, there will be two rivals that will make the adventure even more complicated: the cold and a fierce landscape.
Audience success
The journey has become one of the most successful formats on the 3Cat platform. The signing of Laura Escanes has served to attract new audiences, leveraging her popularity as a social media celebrity. influencer Catalan, for her part, has expressed her comfort with the program despite being emotionally demanding, as the contestants often reach their limits. In fact, Escanes commented last season that hosting The crossing It had given her back her self-confidence after a turbulent period on a personal level, during which she developed a problematic relationship with food, as she revealed to the media. In the promotional images for this new edition, she can be seen enjoying the snow and excitedly thanking all her colleagues and the entire production team. The two previous routes—in the Pyrenees and following the entire coast—managed to accumulate more than 4 million views on the platform and more than 10 million on social media.
The format aims to connect with an audience between 15 and 30 years old who don't consume any audiovisual content in Catalan, and one of the ways to achieve this is by turning the contestants into characters (and testing their ability to coexist in difficult moments). Thus, for the Ponent route, three romantic couples have been selected: former roommates, a coach and a student, coworkers, two couples who are friends, and even cousins-in-law. The oldest person will be Álvaro, 54, and the youngest will be Raül, 24. Seven of the ten couples are under 35.
The first three episodes will be available starting this Thursday. The next three will be released on the 16th, and the final three on October 23rd before the grand finale, which can be seen on Tuesday the 28th. This finale will have two more episodes and will reveal the two winners.
A demanding route
This year's route will begin in the bay of Els Alfacs, in Terres de l'Ebre. They will then continue towards Amposta and the Els Ports Natural Park, where they will have to swim, jump, walk, row, and even climb. In the second stage, they will face the most unknown nature in southern Tarragona, in l'Horta de Sant Joan, and will continue towards Corbera d'Ebre, where the contestants will experience the clashes of the Battle of the Ebro in the style of The crossing.
They will also undergo tests in the Utxesca Reservoir, in the Barony of Sant Oïsme and in Pobla de Segur, but first they will have to enter the land of faults and fire, in Talarn, next to the Sant Antoni reservoir, where endurance will be key. The longest stage of The journey: Ponent expedition It will begin in the Collegats Gorge and end at the Cabdella Power Plant, one of the largest engineering works in Catalonia, in the heart of the Vall Fosca. Sant Quirc, just before the final episodes, will be one of the toughest stages of this season. Finally, they will reach the lands of Aran, where the contestants will conclude this adventure amidst the impressive landscapes of the Vall d'Aran.
