Institut Ramon LLull

The 20th century’s social turmoil shook the saddle too just as the bicycle was establishing itself as one of the preferred means of personal transport and cycling was becoming one of the world’s most popular sports. Our author steers us through ideological clashes, two world wars, decolonization, political propaganda, mass media, and the emergence of a global entertainment market, not to mention all those hopes, fears, and struggles of the citizens; all this unrest climbed onto their bikes and rode alongside this turning wheel of history. In one way or another, cycling events headlined episodes which defined an era: the Dreyfus Affair, the independence of Ireland, the Spanish Second Republic and Civil War, the combat against colonialism, the creation of the European Community, the Cold War, May ’68, Italy’s Years of Lead, or the fall of the Iron Curtain.

In forty chapters this book journeys through forty stages covering the whole of the last century, and proving that a cyclist’s chronicle is a music box, echoing historic events and forging an iron-clad metaphor for human existence.