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.

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

In a global context marked by the erosion of rights, a means of transport like the bicycle has become, more than ever, an ideological symbol. Consequently, political polarization directly impacts decisions regarding sustainable mobility. The 2023 municipal elections marked a turning point in many cities: the arrival of new governments has influenced the management of bike lanes, often citing arguments of safety or freedom to move around by car. We have seen this in Castelldefels, Palma, Elche, Valladolid, and Logroño, and Lisbon has drawn attention for impounding bicycles parked in public spaces. At the same time, in Barcelona, ​​the socialist government of Jaume Collboni has maintained the infrastructure but reduced the push for new traffic-calming measures. In Girona, however, the dynamic is different. It has become established in the last decade as the cycling capital of southern Europe, and businesses linked to the sector have multiplied almost fivefold. If at the beginning of 2014 there were only eight cycling shops In the city, there are currently 41. The bicycle has also become an economic and tourist engine: if in Barcelonaexpanded He lives in a rented apartment costing over 2,000 euros and drinks specialty coffees costing 5 euros; in Girona he is accompanied by a high-end road or gravel bike and equipment worth over 4,000 euros.

It has maintained the same annual fee since its inception in 2009. But its service has grown steadily. Nearly 6,000 people use it in a city of just over 100,000 inhabitants, a 15% increase each year. And it costs no more than the annual maintenance of a bus line, €300,000, with a staff of nine. We're talking about Girona's public bicycle service, Girocleta, which was created sixteen years ago following the Bicing model and has become a successful model of sustainable mobility in mid-sized cities by adhering to two very clear principles: being inexpensive, above all, and having very limited and sustained growth, with an average of one or two new stations each year to avoid overcrowding.

Bicycles are no longer attracting new users. According to a study by the RACC (National Commission for the Promotion of Bicycles) released this Tuesday, the number of cyclists in Barcelona and its access points to the metropolitan area has decreased by 6% in one year, representing a "stagnation" in the expansion of this form of sustainable mobility in the Catalan capital, despite measures to encourage it. The study concludes that although bicycles occupy 16% of road space in Barcelona, only 7% of the population uses them. The case of the Via Augusta bike lane is especially significant: 21% of the space is designated for bicycles, but only 1.5% of users ride on it.

For years, the Catalan Railways (FGC) has been committed to promoting modal interchange when using public transport, facilitating the combined use of different modes of transport on a single journey.

In the middle of Girona's egg yolk, facing the Café Le Bistrot esplanade and the Sant Martí steps, in one of the most romantic and idyllic corners of the city, a spectacular new bicycle shop has just opened. It occupies the two floors of the former Odeon Hall and Theatre, a legendary establishment of leisure and culture in Girona since the 19th century, closed more than ten years ago, which was in a state of disrepair and has now been completely restored after 4 years of work. The new premises, conceived as a kind of boutique of select articles with a multidisciplinary space of sofas and a cafeteria, aims to become a new international attraction for cycling enthusiasts, in a city that has long It has established itself as the world epicenter of cyclingThe owner and developer of the renovation—which cost around €2 million in private capital—is Girona businessman Miquel Casals, and the new tenant is the Velodrom Group, one of the city's leading cycling brands.

She is the first person in the world to hold a specific chair on cycling at a university, in Ghent. Meredith Glaser (California, 1982) holds a PhD in urban planning from the University of Amsterdam, a city where she has lived for the past fifteen years, and is director of the Urban Cycling Institute. "I grew up with the car as the king of transport, and arriving here shook my world: I've never had a car again," she says. This researcher and expert in cycling planning advises the Flemish government and affirms that it is necessary to "redistribute street space." A few days ago, she gave a talk, in collaboration with the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), to promote bicycle use in "greater Barcelona."

Over the years and with experience, managing my large family has become easier. Comparing my parenting style with that of other parents, I think I give less importance to things.

65% of people who cycle in Barcelona claim to feel vulnerable when doing so around the city, and this is a significant increase from the 55% who felt it in 2019, despite the fact that we must also take into account that more and more residents are switching to bicycles (41% have been using this means of transport regularly for under two years) and that they increasingly share spaces with personal mobility vehicles such as electric scooters. In addition, nine out of ten cyclists say that they cannot make their entire journey along safe routes. These are two of the most striking conclusions of the fourth survey on bicycle mobility conducted by RACC. The study, which has surveyed 800 bicycle users and has analysed their habits and opinions, concludes that cyclists demand more and better connections between bike lanes and more facilities to enter and leave the city from other towns.

Nine children and two teachers. Thus began the first bike bus in Catalonia, in February 2020 in Vic. And since then the practice of cycling together to school in large groups through the middle of the road has been spreading to other towns and cities and is now experiencing a real boom this 2022. Canvis en Cadena, an initiative inspired by that first project in Vic to share information with everyone who wants to promote bike buses, now estimates that there are 17 municipalities and a total of about 700 children (and many accompanying family members) who take part. The lines are multiplying week after week at a rate that means that each new line no longer makes the news.