The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni (PSC), announced this Tuesday that the Catalan capital will be, in July 2026, the city from which the Tour de France, the most important cycling race in the world, will start. The mayor has signed, together with Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour, the agreement that will make the sporting event possible. The City Council has been negotiating for six years with Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), the organizing entity of the race, for Barcelona to host the Grande Bouche start in 2026. A team from the City Council of the Catalan capital – among which is the current councilor of sports, David Escudé – has met on several occasions both in Paris and Barcelona with ASO with a single objective: to bring the Tour de France to Barcelona.
The socialist mayor, Jordi Hereu, managed on July 9, 2009 for the sixth stage of the French grand tour to be held between Girona and Barcelona and, the following day, the Catalan capital was also the starting city of a stage that reached Andorra. The Tour also visited Barcelona in 1957 and 1965. Hereu already wanted to attract the race and tried to get the Tour to start in the Catalan capital in 2014. He did not succeed. The Collboni government has taken up the baton of that intention and has achieved that, for the first time in history, Barcelona is the city where the race starts in 2026.
Last year, the Catalan capital organized the start of the Tour of Spain. A stage that followed was the subject of the first criticism of the Collboni government due to the rain and poor scheduling of the lighting of the public lighting, which caused the last teams to enter the finish line with the streets dark. Collboni has already shown its intention to turn Barcelona into a city where major events with global repercussions are held. Last year the first race of the Vuelta was held, this 2024 the America’s Cup and a Formula 1 exhibition will be held tomorrow, Wednesday on Passeig de Gràcia. City Council sources do not rule out trying to attract more cycling races to the city, including those of women’s teams. It is not exceptional that the start of the Tour takes place outside of French territory. In fact, in 1992 it was held in Sant Sebastián, in 2023 in Bilbao and this 2024 in Florence.
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