THE COLOSSUS OF CATALUNYA

You may not recognise the name Mont Caro but climb the Spanish giant and you won't forget it, as Trevor Ward discovers

- Trevor Ward

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 the lush wetlands that form the Ebro Delta, with a painful sting in the tail.

I’m with a group of Spanish journalists and elite riders, and am surprised to learn that few of them have cycled in this part of Spain before. It seems the roads and hills around Girona, two and a half hours north of here, are still the major magnet for cyclists visiting Catalunya.