Àlex Sans (Barcelona, 1976) was clear that he wanted to be part of the cycling world. He first tried it as a cyclist, but when he saw that he “couldn't be professional,” he looked for another alternative. His coach when he was a junior and under-23 was also a masseur for Antonio Pineda's teams, which this year have celebrated 40 years as benchmarks for under-23 teams in Catalonia under the name Club Ciclista Camp Clar. Sans began to learn the trade with them. The leap into professional cycling came in 2000, when he joined the MemoryCard–Jack&Jones team as a masseur and at the same time also as a masseur for the Kelme team as a freelance. He combined races with both teams and at the end of the year, both teams offered him a contract. He chose the Danish team. “It appealed to me. It was more of an adventure,” Sans justifies to ARA in this first week of the Tour. And he continued with a project that later became CSC Proteam, with whom Àlex won the Tour in 2008 with Carlos Sastre. Consolidated in the peloton for decades, he now directs the Pinarello Q36.5 Procycling Team, one of the teams participating in the current Tour de France.

Carcassonne welcomes the crowd that has come to see the start of the fourth stage of the Tour with that blast of heat you feel when you open the oven to take out cannelloni. Enduring the heatwave is worth it because the French spectator this year has eyes only for Paul Seixas (on French radio they pronounce it secsàs), the cyclist who at nineteen years old has stood up to Pogacar before the French race and who has the pressure of an entire country to win a Tour that has eluded them since 1985, when Bernard Hinault achieved the last victory. "He is very young, but he is a strong cyclist. He has many options to fight for the Tour de France, but I don't know if this is his Tour. Maybe next year," says one of the thousands of French spectators who have come to the Occitan city to ARA, under the shade. "We hope he can win one or two stages," he adds. His brother says he hopes he doesn't suffer the same fate as Thibaut Pinot, who with three Tour stages under his belt suffered pressure that tore him apart: "Let's hope Seixas takes it easier and can be like Anquetil in the past and be the great French cyclist of this new era".

Sunday, the initial stages of the Tour de France crossing Catalonia offered us magnificent images of the country. Beyond the sporting competition and the bicycle race speeding along the roads, the Tour has a very attractive tourist aspect. Always, the landscapes adjacent to the race, especially those shown to us by television from a bird's-eye view, are captivating. Bell towers, castles, small churches, and little villages are discovered, tracing a tempting route to visit. Everything seems more beautiful. This time, exceptionally, it was our towns and cities. We saw the church of Cubelles, the beaches of Calafell and Vilanova, Olèrdola Castle, and a spectacular Sitges, with the houses on the promenade and the Cau Ferrat. Magnificent was Viladecans' initiative to draw a large bicycle with the town's name on a ploughed field to assert itself internationally. Sant Feliu de Llobregat Cathedral, from the air, gains presence. The Walden of Sant Just with people on the balconies is impressive. We saw Cervelló Castle, Colònia Güell, and Pedralbes Monastery. Barcelona unfolded before views of Tibidabo, and immediately the city's major tourist hits: Camp Nou, La Pedrera, Barcelona Cathedral, and Santa Caterina Market. With the award ceremony, they showed us the splendid views from the Fabra Observatory with the emblematic grid of the Eixample and the Mediterranean on the horizon. From the sky, the viewpoint is so epic that everything seems better. Even the industrial estates of Baix Llobregat do not have such an inhospitable appearance. The staging of the Tour is delicate and sensitive to the environment. The host's desire to please the payer is evident. The dizzying pace of the Tour has allowed us to see a kind of miniature Catalonia, where you review part of the country at a glance, which can be crossed at a speed to which the train has not accustomed us. The green of the vegetation and the colors of the crops in summer disguised a heat that is not noticeable on television. Collserola looked lush and fresh above the city.But on Telenotícies vespre the panorama changed. Catalonia from the air became tragic and distressing. A TV3 team boarded a Rural Agents helicopter to fly over the trail of the fire in the Gavarres massif. A gray landscape. The green tapestry turned black, showing viewers the extent and perimeter of the fire. Some of the burned houses were also visible, as well as patches of land that, incredibly, resisted the flames. From the air, all the technical language of the firefighters when explaining the geographical evolution of the fire is better understood.The distance that the gaze from the sky gives us shows the country in a much clearer, simpler way. The perspective also becomes much more epic and exciting. It must be for this reason that images, whether majestic or tragic, become hypnotic.

The Tour has said goodbye to Catalonia with the third and final stage between Granollers and Les Angles with apprehension due to the serious fire 60 km from the finish line in French territory and the fire in Les Gavarres that is not yet fully controlled. The fire in Northern Catalonia continues to burn with a new episode of extreme heat with temperatures of up to 40 degrees days after a historic heatwave. The serious situation has caused the Tour's advertising caravan not to hand out gifts to the public and restrictions for attendees in French territory. Despite the heatwave, the great favorite, Tadej Pogacar, has won and is already wearing yellow. The Slovenian is getting down to business.

Waiting for the Tour de France caravan is like waiting for the Three Kings. Long before the cyclists arrive, curious vehicles paid for by the race sponsors parade by, distributing all sorts of gifts on both sides of the road. When you're a child, it's a magical moment. Caps, water bottles, t-shirts, or candies fall from the cars. Then the cyclists arrive. They pass quickly. It doesn't last long. And it's worth it. Those of us who went to see stages in the south of France when we were little remember every detail of those adventures. Later, I returned with friends at a time when you'd take up positions on the mountainsides with sandwiches wrapped in foil and beers. It must have been 2001. The roads were full of Basques dressed in orange, as the Euskatel team was participating in the Tour. It was also worth it.

As a cycling enthusiast and city resident, the start of the Tour from Barcelona generates contradictions in me that perhaps bear some resemblance (saving distances, so no one gets offended) to those experienced by some Catholics with the Pope's recent visit or by addicts of nautical sports (there seem to be some) with the America's Cup.

When Lluís Pascual started cycling, he says he was practically the only one and had to cycle 100 kilometers to meet another cyclist. That's why now that he's 75 years old, he's so excited to see that the Catalan roads and paths are packed with bicycles, one of his great hobbies which he also shares with his brother Francesc. Together they have cycled every inch of the Pyrenees, the Alps, and have done the Taradell-Rome excursion three times, one every 25 years, the last one in 2025. Every year they eagerly await the celebration of the Tour de France, which they have seen pass through La Seu d'Urgell, Sort, and, when they were younger, Tona. But they would never have imagined it would pass through their town, and when they found out, they didn't hesitate to sign up as volunteers. "We've been assigned a stretch of street that we'll have to watch. We're responsible for a part of the Tour," says Lluís excitedly.

To Jonas Vingegaard, two-time winner of the Tour de France, the voice of Jordi Vidal (Barcelona, 1963) will surely sound familiar, as he is the announcer for the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, which the Dane won this year with a triumph in the general classification and two stage victories. Vingegaard has heard his name every day in the Volta while Jordi Vidal did his job as an announcer in front of the professional cyclists and the public at the roadside during the seven Catalan stages. The Volta has a lot to do with Vidal being the Catalan announcer for the three Tour de France starts in Barcelona, Tarragona, and Granollers this year, thanks to the recommendations of Rubèn Peris, the general director of the Volta. “Friend Peris recommended me to the Tour during my first year as announcer for the Volta in 2016, so that I would be the Catalan announcer for the arrival and departure of stages in Andorra,” Vidal explains to ARA.

Barcelona is warming up its engines for the start of the Tour de France, which will start from the Catalan capital for the first time. The race will begin on July 4 with a team time trial finishing in Montjuïc, covering 19.7 km, starting from the seafront and passing through iconic city points such as the Sagrada Família, Passeig de Gràcia, and Barceloneta beach. The second stage will be on Sunday, July 5, starting from Tarragona and arriving in Barcelona after 178 km, passing through Torredembarra, Sitges, El Garraf, an demanding uphill section to Begues, and three short but explosive climbs to Montjuïc Castle after entering Barcelona with a route modified due to the swine fever outbreak in Collserola. The third stage, on Monday, July 6, will start from Granollers and head through Centelles, Vic, Ripoll, and will reach the Pyrenees with the Collada de Toses as an attractive point, before seeing the cyclists head towards French territory, with the destination being the finish in Les Angles.

The Tour de France will avoid Collserola Park. The organization has finally accepted the request from the Generalitat, which had requested to change the route of the second stage —scheduled for July 5 and starting in Tarragona and ending in Barcelona-, due to the outbreak of African swine fever (ASF). The objective was to ensure that there could be public in the entire section of the race, and to prevent some spectators from trying to access the park to see the cyclists despite the restrictions.

African swine fever (ASF) continues to spread – this Thursday 13 new positives have been confirmed, bringing the total to 297 cases – and there are already 19 municipalities with restrictions on access to the Collserola Natural Park. Faced with this situation, sources from the Generalitat confirm to el ARA that they have asked the organization of the Tour de France to consider a change of route in the second stage of the competition – at the beginning of July –, as it would have to pass through an area currently affected by safety and prevention measures against the infectious disease.

The 2026 Tour de France has unveiled its route in a special edition in Paris, as Catalonia will host the first three stages. Barcelona has never before hosted the start of the prestigious French race, which for 2026 is opting for a fast route that will include two ascents of Alpe d'Huez. The 2026 Tour will go "from the Sagrada Familia to the Eiffel Tower," as race director Christian Prudhomme said, referring to the fact that the team presentation ceremony will take place at the foot of the temple designed by Antoni Gaudí.

France hosts the 112th edition of the Tour de France. 3,338.8 km and a vertical drop of 52,500 meters spread over 21 stages, with two big favorites: Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, and a Catalan referee: Marc Soler. On Saturday, July 5, Lilla will kick off the competition with a stage finish at the same starting point. It will be three weeks of cycling through French soil, culminating on Sunday, July 27 in Paris. The Camps Elisis will once again be the final finish, after last year's Tour ended in Nice due to the Olympic Games.

Often the things that mark our lives are determined by chance. In 2019, just a few days before the Vuelta Ciclista a Catalunya, the UAE Team Emirates team was left without a chef. They made contacts and ended up reaching out to Esteve Ramírez (Barcelona, ​​​​1990), who had worked in the kitchens of large restaurants and had training in sports nutrition. It was supposed to be a temporary solution, but today this Catalan chef has ended up in charge of feeding the team during the most important competitions. And this also includes the food for Tadej Pogacar, the winner of three Tours de France in the last five years.