Among the wonders that the Filmoteca treasures, a seven-minute film entitled ‘Barcelona, view taken from a tram’, by Ricardo Baños, 1908. The tram runs through the backbone of Barcelona, from Las Ramblas to Craywinckel, along Paseo de Gràcia, Plaça de Lesseps and Carrer de Salmerón, today Gran de Gràcia. Sample a city of tented shops and gas lamps, cheerful, curious and dressed in Sunday: bowler hat, hat, cap, bustle and puffed sleeve. Skirts to the cobbled floor. Horse carts, three or four cars and bikes. Lots of bikes that cross in front of him. Some go to their holy air. Other cyclists turn to get in the photo. More than 50 bicycles enter and leave the sequence shot in this celluloid jewel, colored and available on the most popular free video platforms.
If you look at a map of Barcelona, squinting your eyes, between major and minor expansions, polygons and self-built neighborhoods, long, trembling radial filaments appear. Are the roads of blood transport that came out of the nine gates of the medieval wall and they crossed the plain towards the towns that today give their name to our old quarters: Sants, Hostafrancs, Les Corts, Sarrià, Gràcia, Horta, la Sagrera, Sant Andreu and Sant Martí. These stubborn and narrow streets cross the city of neighborhoods and extend to the metropolitan municipalities with surprising continuity: to El Prat, L’Hospitalet, Esplugues, Montcada, Santa Coloma, Sant Adrià, Badalona and beyond. As they were designed for oxen carts, donkeys and horses, they effectively connect towns taking advantage of the gentler slopes of the terrain. That is why they are so comfortable for cyclists of any age and physical condition.
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The Metropolitan Area is made up of 36 municipalities and measures about 40 km from end to end. It could be reached from any of its ends to the Plaza de Catalunya in an hour by bike at a gentle pace. We must applaud and celebrate the implementation of the metropolitan AMBici, which started on January 30 in five municipalities with 55 stations and 600 bikes, all electric. It is a bit surprising that the system does not originally match the municipal Bicing from Barcelona. It seems there have been administrative difficulties. But if the European Commission knew how to agree with countries and manufacturers from all over the world so that -almost all- mobile phones have the same charger, there is no doubt that we can achieve it here too. Seven transfer stations and a shared metropolitan subscription with discounts for users of the two services are going to patch up the disagreement for now.
The next thing would be to sit down to mend the patchwork map that forms the set of bicycle lanes in the Metropolitan Area. The Bicivía project announced by the Area can make a wonderful contribution, but citizens committed to healthy and sustainable mobility await the result of bigger and better agreements.