Tibidabo (in Collserola range of mountains) is the highest mountain surrounding Barcelona, at 500 meters height. It is a must getting to the top of Tibidabo cycling, overlooking Barcelona, and it has been included in several professional cycling races.
You can see the church on top from all over the city. It is impressive, illuminated at night. Tibidabo is the goal of every cyclist in Barcelona.
But Barcelona is a big city, and it is not very usual that a professional cycling race had a finish at the top of this iconic mountain. Montjuic is a much more popular mountain, which had many stage endings in Volta a Catalunya and also in Vuelta a España. Even in the Tour de France 2009 finished in Montjuic! Not to mention that Montjuic hosted a couple of Cycling World Championships years 1973 and 1984. But Tibidabo has had several stages ending in cycling races.
In this article you can read some details of the climb and several sides that Tibidabo has.
So far, just in 3 times Volta a Catalunya finished at the top of Tibidabo, they were the years 1955 (victory for Alfredo Esmatges), 1986 (victory for Johan Van de Velde), and 2007 with a spectacular ending in the steepest part (the so-called parking road) with Samuel Sánchez ahead of Dimitri Vinokourov. Cycling to the top of Tibidabo with the fantastic sights of Barcelona has become a classic in professional cycling races.
We wish we had stage endings at Tibidabo much more often! In Barcelona and Catalonia, in general, we love cycling and we love watching live professional races!
