The town of Tortosa has hosted the Volta a Catalunya 68 times during the race’s 112-year history, mostly during the 1940s and 50s when it was still reeling from some of the fiercest fighting of the Spanish Civil War.
Author Ernest Hemingway reported from the town after it had suffered intense bombing by Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces.
Hemingway, a cycling fan who had previously included an encounter with the Tour of the Basque Country in his breakthrough novel, The Sun Also Rises, described the circling aircraft as having “the mechanical monotony of movement of a quiet afternoon at a six-day bike race.”
A controversial reminder of those times looks down upon us as we pedal sedately across the Pont de l’Estat that spans the River Ebro. It’s a modern sculpture towering 40 metres high that was constructed in 1966 by Franco to celebrate his side’s triumph and has divided opinion in the town ever since.
Our route echoes the last time a stage of the Volta a Catalunya started from here in 2017 (Tortosa will also host a stage of this year’s race that starts on 20 March) – a long, lazy loop around
