When the Bicing service system opened in 2007 I hurried up to sign up. By that time, my bike had been stolen several times on the streets of the city, so I really thought it was the best idea that the municipality could have in order to promote healthy, clean and non-expensive transportation. The Bicing was close to collapse shortly after it opened, when the many bikes were broken and not all anchors seemed to work properly, but I have always been a regular user.
It has only (or already, depending on your perspective) been six years and I can't deny that the Bicing has become an image of Barcelona. Leaving aside complaints from pedestrians because of the incivility of some cyclists and complaints of Bicing users about the lack of good bike paths, one must admit that the public bike system has become a "thing of Barcelona", as those that I try to highlight in this blog.
Have you ever been to the circus in Barcelona? I have, but just to one of those big and "modern" circuses focused more to attract adult audiences. The truth is that I would have liked to go to a circus as a child, one of those traditional ones, those who assemble and remove their tents in the few open spaces left in the city.
Those circus in which artists arrive in trucks and vans, the ones that exercise a fascination among those of us who do not live on the road, the ones that make us wonder what it is like to live in a special community, a nomadic family.
The truth is that circuses have changed a lot since I was little. Luckily, they still visit us. For the record, I like that they are adapting to changing times. And by the way, there is a circus school working in the Parc del Forum. It is called La Central del Circ, and is meant to be a space for developing circus activities that the City Council prompted, and where training courses are held, in case if anyone is thinking about it!
