In the closing kilometres of stage 13 of this year’s Vuelta a España, a dog tied to a chair ran out into the road. Thankfully, the incident didn’t cause any problems, and neither any riders nor the animal got hurt. But in the most volatile edition of the Vuelta in decades, where for two weeks the possibility that the entire event could grind to a halt has been constantly on the table, the misfortune of one hapless canine briefly sparked rose-tinted memories.
Suddenly, it seemed, we were cast back to previous editions, where protests were so rare it felt like the only regular off-road incidents affecting the Vuelta were stray animals and the odd confused, over-enthusiastic or inebriated spectator ending up colliding in one form or another with the race.
In the 90-year history of the Vuelta, the most notorious off-road suspension came in 1978, when Basque separatists violently disrupted the race. “I remember how they rolled tree trunks down a slope to block the road in front of us,” Enrique Cima, a former Spanish pro present that day, told Cyclingnews, “and they had to neutralize the stage til the last 15 kilometres into San Sebastián.”
Matters could hardly have got worse, it seemed, but they did. In the afternoon’s time trial, after Bernard Hinault turned in a race-winning time, other riders like Jean-René Bernaudeau, running third, were unable to finish because of the protesters. The stage was cancelled, Hinault proclaimed the overall winner, and the Vuelta did not return to the Basque Country until 2011.
The very occasional blockading of the roads, or attempts to harm participants, or both, have continued to happen as the years rolled by. To focus on the Vuelta alone, in the Canary Islands in the late 1980s, pro-independence supporters briefly wreaked havoc by throwing drawing pins onto the roads. In one stage through Navarre – seen as part of the Basque Country by some separatists – in…
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