The Ring Roads - Las Rondes

Those who, as I did, started driving in the 90s can not imagine Barcelona without the Rondes, the ringway that goes around the city. These two ring roads were built, like so many other things, for the 1992 Olympic Games. They are over 35 kilometers long and the two big junctions at both ends help distribute the traffic moving through Barcelona and its metropolitan area.

As a regular user of the Ronda del Litoral I know perfectly its limitations. I know they have been criticized for the number of accidents in it and because they don't contribute to promote sustainable transport. I also know that there are many miles without a shoulder, that entrance ramps are often short and dangerous and traffic jams are very common in some sections. By the way, those traffic jams can be really exasperating when there a vehicle breaks down and stops occupying a whole lane.

I do not even want to imagine the city traffic if all this amount of vehicles that circulate now along the Rondes had to drive through the center of Barcelona!

Cobi (the best mascot)

We recently celebrated the 20th anniversary (yes, twenty years already!) of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Barcelona. Those of us who are old enough have a big amount of mental pictures and memories of those two weeks that changed Barcelona.

And we all have in mind which was the mascot of those Olympic Games, Cobi. We must admit that there were very few who loved him from the beginning. Perhaps we were not prepared to love that groundbreaking, cubist-inspired, Catalan shepherd, who apparently had no volume and had his nose on the side of his face.

But gradually we were able to overcome the cold welcome (to say it in nice words) welcome and get to love him, to the point that he became one of the most popular mascots in the history of the Olympics. Then came Petra, Jordi, Olivia and Forçut, who formed the Cobi troupe.