The daughter of Annabel and Guillermo, Willy to her friends, has just turned one. The couple celebrated an anniversary this September that was not only a family one: in 2025 she also became the first child born in Beget, in the Alta Garrotxa, in 16 years. A sign of the turning point that this small, scattered village has experienced, isolated from Camprodon and Castellfollit de la Roca by a long, narrow, winding road of 20 and 28 kilometers, respectively.

The first time Hugo Font got on a tandem, he felt dizzy. Going behind another person, without being able to see what was happening, gave him a sensation similar to riding a roller coaster with his eyes closed. “Until the body assimilates many new things and sensations...”, he explains in conversation with ARA. Now, almost five years after having joined ONCE, Hugo Font and Héctor Botí are about to face a much more demanding challenge and make history in a world competition: 109 kilometers of gravel at the Sea Otter Europe in Girona, alongside their guide pilots, Jordi Figueras and Charly Camacho from Lloret de Mar.

"I was born among sheep and the sheep give me freedom". This is how Marina Vilalta, from Ripoll, summarized the spirit that had led her to be the longest-active shepherdess in Catalonia. Born into a very humble family in Solanguit (Ogassa), at the foot of the Taga, almost a century ago, in 1927, she passed away this Sunday night into Monday at 99 years old, as confirmed by her family. Until her final days, she continued to lead her flock of Guirra sheep in the village of Bruguera (Ribes de Freser), on the other side of the Taga, in sun, rain, or snow. In 2022, ARA interviewed her on a rainy autumn day while she was grazing, shortly after she received the Creu de Sant Jordi for being an "example of the importance of work in the rural world, and of the resilience of the people who dedicate themselves to it".

The Vermilion Coast has many points in common with the Costa Brava. Coves, fishing villages, vineyards by the sea, and Catalan cuisine. But there is less overcrowding, less international tourism, and often, prices are also more competitive. From Banyuls to Collioure, this coastline of Northern Catalonia offers many ways to eat in front of the Mediterranean. On this tour, we have chosen five, including one on the plain, right by the Leucate lagoon. These are proposals that do not seek the same thing: there are those who prioritize the product and identity, those who put the landscape at the center, those who bet on international cuisine, and those who seek a more sophisticated gastronomic experience. The sea, however, is present at all tables and landscapes. Hurry up, as they are about to close for the season.

“I used to work here.” Diana Gabaldón (El Provencio, Cuenca, 1937) points to the old Coma Cros textile factory in Salt, now a cultural hub. By a twist of fate, she now lives opposite it, at the Les Vetes residence. She has left in a wheelchair and is getting onto the En Bici Sense Edat tricycle. It is an electric bicycle with a front bench designed for two people with reduced mobility to ride on. She is 89 years old and can no longer get around Salt on foot, by bike, or by moped, as she did when she was young, but thanks to this volunteering project, she is once again “running” – as she puts it – through the streets she discovered when she arrived from Cuenca at 18 years old.

At first glance, it could seem like the exterior of a school in the Netherlands or Denmark. On both sides of the street, dozens of bicycles are accumulated. There are also some tied to fences and traffic signs around. It's nine in the morning and the large parking lot has been filling up as children arrived at the summer camp. But we are not in Northern Europe. We are at the Banyoles lake. And this large bicycle parking lot belongs to one of the city's institutions: the Banyoles Swimming Club. Esther Guerrero (Banyoles, 1990) has also arrived by bike. It's the end of July, she is 33 weeks pregnant – at the time of the interview, she is now 37 – and she has come from the Can Puig neighborhood. “The Club is like my home; it's where I grew up, where I trained, and where I've spent my daily life for many years. Without exaggeration, twenty-five years,” she explains.

Eight months pregnant, Mar Reguant (Súria, Bages, 1984) took her bicycle to buy her first electric car. She already had a daughter, lived on the outskirts of Chicago, and got around by pedaling alone, but she was soon to be a mother for the second time, and a big snowfall was predicted. “The car was very small and had a maximum range of 100 kilometers,” she recalls. When she returned from the United States after the pandemic, she moved to a development in Bellaterra with her two young children. And unlike her neighbors, for a year and a half she also lived without a car. “Now I think about it and I don't know how we did it – she explains, laughing –. The children were very young and it shows that it can be done, but sometimes activism weighs us down a bit.”

It is not easy to interview Joan Pujades, from the La Puntual bakery. He does not like the spotlight. The long queues in front of his bakery in the Devesa neighborhood have not come from major marketing campaigns, but from consistency, good products, friendliness, and, above all, humility. When he agrees to do it, after much insistence, he sets only one condition: that it be while he is delivering bread. This means spending an hour chasing his tricycle through the streets of Girona. At every corner, someone greets him. A customer, a shopkeeper, an acquaintance. He exchanges a few words with everyone, always by name. He gives away a fritter, a slice of cake, or simply a “good morning!” “I’m a bit like Girona’s Snowflake. And they haven’t thrown peanuts at me yet, but it’s not far off. Since there are few bicycle delivery people in Girona...”, he says, laughing.

Just the year of the Barcelona Olympic Games, Maria Vidal's parents decided to leave the capital and move to Cardedeu, in the Vallès Oriental. The argument to convince the children was that they could get around by bicycle. “They bought one for each of us – she recalls–. We went by bike to high school, to visit friends... We moved around without depending on anyone.” Two decades later, Cardedeu laid the groundwork for many more children, like Maria at the time, to go by bicycle: it connected the five schools with different sections of cycle lanes, so that everyone could get there by pedaling from home.

We arranged to meet at a quarter past nine in the morning in Castelldefels, but I arrive late after an hour of traffic jams on the AP-7 and the ronda de Dalt. The photographer, Pau de la Calle, calls me, a little startled: Juan Antonio Flecha (Junín, Argentina, 1977) has already passed, as his surname indicates, like an arrow, with his two daughters sitting on the back of the bicycle. I catch him just as he has dropped them off at school, in Gavà Mar. From there we will cycle to his house, where a podcast recording awaits him.

When Laia Palau (Barcelona, 1979) stopped playing basketball in 2022 to start a new stage at Uni Girona, she bought herself a bicycle. For years, contracts had forbidden her from cycling to avoid injuries. She went into Decathlon and came out with “the horse,” as she calls the bicycle that today is an extension of herself and accompanies her everywhere, even to buy bread each morning. "When I start going to Fontajau every day, I think I'm taking a wonderful path – she explains as we cross the bridge over the Ter River. I cross the Devesa, I cross the river, I see the mountains, some amazing sunsets... I thought of all my people from Barcelona and said: 'You guys are losers!' Every day I thought: 'How lucky I am'.

Every day, whether it's cold or a heat that cracks stones, more than a hundred residents of the Remei neighborhood in Vic pedal to Santa Eugènia de Berga to work at the slaughterhouse. They don't wear jerseys or cyclometers. The bicycle is simply the vehicle that allows them to arrive for early morning shifts and return home at odd hours. It's a daily scene that goes unnoticed, but it explains a large part of the area's reality.

Arrives at El Celler de Can Roca cycling, with a backpack on her back. “In my locker I always have a change of clothes for cycling and another for street wear, and a towel to be able to arrive, shower and get ready. The curtain opens: I put on the service uniform. It closes: I put on the cycling outfit”. Marta Cortizas (Culleredo, A Coruña, 1992) is a sommelier with a meteoric career. She arrived in Girona in 2021 with a single suitcase and her bicycle for a four-month stage alongside Pitu Roca. She hasn't left since: in 2024 she was recognized as the best sommelier in Catalonia and in 2025, of the entire State and the Iberian Peninsula.

It's impossible to cross paths with him and not look at him. Wool jersey, knitted shorts, 1950s cycling shoes, a flat cap instead of a helmet, vintage glasses and a spare camera on his chest. But what draws the most attention is the bicycle. “It's Dutch, from 1908, made of iron and little else. An uncomfortable racing bike in terms of position, without gears and with spoon brakes over the tires, with which I have ridden hundreds of kilometers”. Isma Garcia (Granollers, 1992) has been steeped in cycling since he was very young, growing up in a family linked to the almost centenary Granollers Cycling Club. But it wasn't until his twenties that he began on his own in a hobby with which he has ended up finding a large community on social networks: restoring century-old bicycles.

When four years ago I returned to work from Girona, after years covering political information in Madrid, I set out to understand the cycling boom that the city has experienced. One of the first people I spoke to was Anna Gibert Sau (Riudarenes, 1977), a Mossos d'Esquadra officer specialized in gender-based violence and co-founder of Girona Gravel Girls, a community made up exclusively of women that now exceeds 430 members.

A bag of salad, some cookies, cat food, or the plastic label from a water bottle. It's hard to find a supermarket without some kind of flexible packaging. They are present, on average, in half of the products, even up to 80%. But behind these wrappers lies an industry practically invisible to the consumer, yet essential for products to be promoted on shelves. From Riudellots de la Selva, in the urban area of Girona, Comexi has been developing the technology for over seventy years that allows for the printing and transformation of this type of packaging, a global market where it competes with some of the world's leading manufacturers.

Between Banyuls and Portvendres, in the Roussillon, there is a coast that has lived for more than a century with its back to tourism. The Costa Vermella, the continuation of the Costa Brava towards Northern Catalonia, displays one of its most well-preserved landscapes. There are no second homes, nor sports ports. But rather a protected area on the seafront and vineyards that merge with the water. It is the bay of Paulilles, a collection of beaches saved from the tourist massification of the 60s and 70s thanks to dynamite.

Ten months before the next municipal elections, the pro-independence tripartite that governed Girona since 2023 has come to an end. After a harsh article published on Sunday, in which the deputy mayor and candidate for re-election for Junts, Gemma Geis, had already anticipated that her "patience" had run out, the party of Carles Puigdemont has made the decision to leave the executive and move to the opposition. Geis announced this Tuesday morning at a press conference, accompanied by the party's six councilors. "Our degree of demand is very high and Girona deserves more," she stated.

Julia Aceituno first set foot in Girona in 1990. She had grown up in Talanga, a small town of 40,000 inhabitants an hour from the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, and at the time she was 36 years old and had three children. "I came for a holiday during the time of Felipe González," she recalls. At that time in Girona there were only nine of her compatriots: "We all knew each other!". Thirty-six years later, in the urban area of Girona alone, it is estimated that there are about 20,000 people of Honduran origin, and in the entire province, 40,000.

The Ter river, before carving its path towards the Empordà plain, flows through a final narrow passage. It is the Congost, straddling Girona and Celrà, a bottleneck through which passes the road connecting to La Bisbal and Palamós (C-66), the train heading to Figueres and Portbou (R11), and also a little-known and large underground channel that supplies water to what is known as the Empordà of Gironès: the Vinyals irrigation ditch. The Congost becomes a mandatory compression point for all infrastructure. But despite the lack of space, ingenuity has made it possible that on Sunday a new path will be inaugurated, allowing pedestrians and bicycles to cross the Congost safely, separated from the intense and dangerous traffic of the C-66