Girona, cycling capital of Europe

The city is asleep. The bells of the Cathedral of Santa María de Girona have just rung at nine in the morning but the streets will still take a few hours to fill. Suddenly, the silence of the Vell neighborhood is broken with an infinite click click click. It is faint but, on the medieval cobblestones of a sleeping city, the noise produced by the pawl and ratchet of a bicycle sprocket sounds like a ratchet in the hands of a child at Easter. The cream-colored Canyon is the first bike of the morning. In the next few minutes a red Trek, several Specialized and some Focus will pass by. Above all of them, some androgynous and stylized figures, with defined muscles like the mannequins in a sports store. Concentrated. Look forward. At this time of the morning, being fashionable in Girona is wearing a thin, tight T-shirt, padded shorts, polarized sunglasses, an aerodynamic helmet and shoes with cleat adjustment that hook to the pedals, turning the bicycle into a Improved extension of the human body. Faster, more powerful, more graceful. More suitable for moving around the capital of European cycling.

Although it all started with Johnny Weltz, it all exploded with Lance Armstrong. The first arrived in Girona in 1986 and was in charge of defending the province within the professional cycling community. But in 2001, Armstrong, convinced by Weltz, settled in the city, dragging his entire team behind him. This is how Hamilton, Van de Velde, Landis and the entire US Postal arrived, the first international professional cycling team to make Girona its headquarters. The strategic location for training with views of the Tour and the good weather were the main attractions of the city for professionals. The entrepreneurship of ex-cyclists and brand promotions did the rest.

“There has always been a cycling group in Girona, but starting in 2018 there was a boom and it began to grow a lot thanks to the opening of shops, cafes and tour operators,” says Eugeni Torres, director of the Ultonia hotel. According to Torres, of the 800 beds that the establishment has, 15% are occupied by cyclists who normally come through one of the city agencies that offer tours with guides, routes, accommodation and meals.

In 2008, professional cyclist Christian Meier and his wife, Amber, Canadians, arrived in Girona pursuing the dream of Christian, who was then competing for the Orica team, which had established its base in the city. Seven years later, after Meier's retirement from the professional world, the two founded La Fábrica, the first cafeteria to serve specialty coffee in the city and one of the first bike-friendly places in Girona. A year later, in 2016, mechanical engineer Lee Comerford and professional cyclist Louise Laker opened their Eat, Sleep, Cycle store, dedicated to selling professional bicycles and organizing tours around the province focused on amateur cyclists who wanted to ride in the same places. by those who trained their idols. “We started with a shop with seven bicycles that we bought with a credit card, a small store and a first route for which we charged 600 euros,” Comerford recalls. Now they are owners of one of the largest tourism agencies in the city, with four stores that are divided into a clothing store, a cafeteria, a bicycle and rental store and a workshop, with which they have a turnover of six million euros a year. Girona was on the map.

The average price of an excursion they organize is about 3,000 euros for five days. “Our main clients are Americans, and for an American, spending 5,000 to 10,000 for a week's vacation is fine because they come willing to live a unique experience and pay whatever it takes. We know that the tours are very expensive for a Spaniard, but they are for foreigners and the social outings that we organize are our offer for the community,” explains Comerford. At the end of March, Eat, Sleep, Cycle organized the first free ride of the season, for which more than 50 people signed up. The offer consisted of two routes, one gravel and the other road, of more than 70 kilometers each.

Of all those attending that day, there were only three local cyclists. The rest were tourists who had come on their own to cycle, like the group formed by Marye Plantinga, Huub Segers and Arno van Mullem, Belgians and Dutch between 44 and 60 years old who were taking advantage of a holiday in Girona for which they had rented a house and had brought their own bicycles in a van. Of course, his diagnosis is implacable: Girona will die of success. “There are many bicycles. On routes like this, where 50 or 70 people leave, the platoon is too large and it is unsustainable because we saturate the road,” said Plantinga, an administrative officer in Antwerp.

Although there are no official data, according to Dr. Lluís Mundet i Cerdan, from the University of Girona, author of a study on this city as a cycle tourism destination, about 20,000 foreign cyclists stop by every year due to good weather, good roads, terrain on where you can find all kinds of difficulties, respectful drivers and an ecosystem of cafes, hotels, rental shops, workshops and physiotherapists that has developed around the bicycle. And although it all started as a training place for professionals, over the years the cycling teams have moved to Andorra and Girona has become a favorite place for non-professional bike lovers.

Mostly, the profile corresponds to Anglo-Saxons (with Americans, Canadians and Australians in the lead). They have a very high purchasing power, since the budget for a good bicycle usually starts at 4,000 euros, and 75% of them are men, "although we see more and more women," says Mundet i Cerdan. “They spend 5,000 euros a week and they want quality and guides who are professional ex-cyclists. They climb a mountain and on the other side they are waiting for them with the table set. The cultural issue leaves them quite cold, so they want good restaurants and wines,” she maintains. Those who do not go on a tour but come with their bicycle usually spend 150 to 300 euros per day.

From CicloTurisme, a company specialized in cycling routes since 1996 and the oldest in Girona, its CEO, Eduard Kirchner, maintains that cycling tourism benefits the city. “Rehabilitate the old town, so welcome gentrification. But of course, I am a businessman, not an anti-capitalist. It is one thing to avoid injustice, which the Administration has to do, and another is to blame everything on the cyclists,” he maintains. Josep Rubio, businessman and owner of Hors Catégorie, a restaurant and cafe especially dedicated to cyclists and their bicycles, goes a little further. “Before there were junkies and they complained. Now there are cyclists who leave money in the city and complain. They always complain. The current City Council wants local commerce. Well, local commerce doesn't make money,” he says.

The complaints come from residents of the Vell neighborhood of the city. Being a pedestrian space in which cars are prohibited, residents encounter cyclists every day who come in their van to the apartment they have rented and invade the streets because Google Maps does not tell them that driving is not possible in that area. “The neighborhood is being depopulated due to Airbnb and the increase in rents. We don't have local neighbors, we don't have children, and those who come to ride bikes don't adapt to neighborhood life. They have their cafes and their shops and are not part of the neighborhood fabric. It is as if you constantly have squatters invading your house,” says a neighbor who is part of the neighborhood association of the Vell neighborhood and who prefers not to reveal her name. “Rents have gone up in price, it's true. But whose apartments are they? They are all from Girona owners who know that only foreigners can afford them. They themselves are the ones who kick out the locals,” explains Lee Comerford.

Esther, sitting in front of a café con leche in one of the new establishments in the historic center, says that the coffee now costs 4 euros. A few months ago she was at 3.50. “It is expensive, very expensive, I pay it, but of course, it is not a price that locals can pay. But do you know why I go to this place? Because I can leave my bike here. Because these foreign places are all adapted for that and the usual bars don't even let us enter with it nor do they have places outside to leave it." Esther is from Girona, all her life, and she has been riding a bicycle, also since she was a child. Like Anna Gibert, she has been observing the cycling boom that the city is experiencing for years. Gibert, 44 years old and from Girona, thought one day that why not take advantage of the cycling environment and go on collective and local rides. She made a call on WhatsApp to which she invited her friends. Seven came, the first members of what, three years later, has become the Girona Gravel Girls, a women-only cycling club that already has 215 members. “It is a way to empower ourselves, without a doubt, but also to share, to talk, to have a coffee before departure and a beer afterwards and talk about our things,” says Gibert, police officer in the police service unit. the woman. “Probably my profession has influenced me to create a group only for women,” she acknowledges and continues: “In almost all the outings that are organized, the majority of the members are men and the atmosphere is very different. There is always someone who accelerates too much in a section where it is not even necessary, just to mark territory. To show that they can.”

“My husband cheated on me after 22 years of marriage and two daughters. One day, while on Instagram, I came across the Gravel Girls group. I loaded my bike into the car and went to ride them. The boost of energy, independence… I felt super-empowered. I realized that I didn't need self-help or psychologists. My therapy is the bicycle and being with them, who are like my family,” says Mónica, one of the members who lives near Barcelona, ​​but every weekend she travels to Girona to ride. In the group, whose outings are free since none of them are dedicated to this business, they admit any woman with a gravel bicycle - a type of road with thinner mountain wheels - who wants to ride them. On departure day, a Saturday at the end of March, there is a good atmosphere and two languages ​​are spoken: Catalan for the locals and English for the tourists or expats who live in Girona. There is Mónica, Anna, María or Esther, but also Claudia, a Londoner who is spending her vacation in Girona, or Julie, a guide from New York who makes routes for tourists. Also some illustrious participants, such as Connie Carpenter, gold medalist in track cycling at the Los Angeles Olympic Games. The day the Gravel Girls hike at the end of March coincides with the Eat, Sleep, Cycle social outing. After each one riding their routes, the two groups, locals and tourists, meet on a terrace with music, drinks and snacks.

The city has woken up. Pedestrian tourists fill the streets of the center. The cyclists return after traveling the paths that Armstrong once traveled or on which Education First now trains or Robert Gesink continues to ride. It's time to eat. Roads, gravel routes or mountain passes can wait until tomorrow.

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