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.