Happiness on wheels: Why do Barça players cycling inspire so much empathy?

Shortly after Barça were crowned La Liga champions, four first-team players were spotted cycling through Barcelona. Dani Olmo, Iñigo Martínez, Eric Garcia, and Pedri took bicycles from the city's Bicing service to attend the title celebration dinner after visiting Ferran Torres in the hospital. The videos of the four euphoric footballers riding together along Diagonal Avenue brought back a vibrant, adolescent happiness reminiscent of some 1980s films. The video of Olmo himself filming himself in close-up while riding the bike, talking to his teammates, was even more reminiscent. Films like ET, the extraterrestrial and The Goonies, with images of the child protagonists racing on their bikes, have become iconic, transporting us to that state of mind and to a very specific time in our lives. They are very significant for those generations who, in the summer, felt in control of their lives by gripping the handlebars on the streets they descended. The bicycle, in movies and TV shows, represented an escape from the adult world and its rules. It became a symbol of friendship, adventure, and, above all, freedom. Bike rides always represented a journey toward excitement and discovery. In fact, when you hop on a bike again now, it feels like you're recapturing a part of that childhood. Of all the celebrations we've seen from the League, this one of the intrepid excursion on two wheels seems to respond to an instinctive need to channel an overwhelming joy. The act of riding a bike multiplies their happiness, makes it more tangible, more real. It increases the intensity of the moment. Because riding a bike makes you feel part of the world. The bicycle was also the transportation system for the humblest of the poor. That short journey the four Barça players took has something of a return to their true selves, freeing themselves from the pressure and conventions that limit you when you're a football star.

A In Praise of the Bicycle, the French anthropologist Marc Augé stated: "No one can praise the bicycle without talking about themselves. The bike is part of the history of each one of us. Learning takes us back to particular moments of childhood and adolescence. Thanks to it, we have all discovered a little of our own body, of its linked capabilities. For someone of my generation, talking about the bicycle is inevitably evoking many memories. But these memories are not only personal;

That's why the images of Dani Olmo, Iñigo Martínez, Eric Garcia and Pedri riding their bicycles provoked so much empathy. The four of them seemed to be at the height of happiness. The images infected you with a smile and, at the same time, an enormous nostalgia for that absolute, unconscious, unconditional, crazy happiness that makes you believe you are flying, that still has no fear or cracks.