The days pass and the speaker is growing. The polvorín of the proper protests in the return has once again caused another end … dishonorable stage for the race. A mass demonstration in the final port, located three kilometers from the finish line, has been uncontrollable for the police, no matter how much the device was redoubled after the Bilbao day. The organization has had to act quickly and improvise a finish line. It would be in the town of Mos and not in Castro de Herville, eight kilometers above. Before, he had already been forced to remove a cross tree on the road and carved, before the start of the Alto de Prado. The cyclists followed their course without a break, but could not do it until the end.
The escaped rolled down 14 kilometers for the goal when they were informed that everything ended up in the absence of 8. The protests had overflowed and nothing seemed to guarantee their security to continue like this. With what everything would end without fireworks. Two stages already modified on the fly, although this time with winner. That is why Landa fought, closer than ever, but it couldn’t be. The cultivation broth already takes a dimension with which it seems difficult to continue like this to Madrid. The concern is admitted and it is already speculated to what extent it is convenient to dispute the last two stages, Saturday and Sunday, in the ball of the world and in Madrid, when they do not stop emerging calls to protest.
But before the weekend there are days left. The platoon should cross León, Valladolid (counterreloj) and Salamanca, where nothing seems to indicate that the situation will be more controllable than in Galicia, Asturias or the Basque Country, when the movement began to be overwhelming for the return.
The tension climate that is lived at the social level around the race began to be palpable since cyclists set foot in Spain. Until then, as in the turn and the tour, the protests had been peaceful or dissolved, without affecting the development of the test. Everything changed in the fifth stage, a team counterreloj in Figueras, in which a group cut the road as the Israel team. Although the following days were developed with relative normality, the intensity of the protests intensified with the arrival in Euskadi.
In Lumbier, Navarra, three protesters broke into the route and the squad had to stop and some change their trajectory, with which Simone Petilli (Intemrché) ended on the ground. “Please, we are only cyclists and we are doing our job, but if our security continues, we are no longer guaranteed and we feel in danger,” the Italian asked. It did not serve the effect. The few who manifest are victims of the social polarization of which politicians are also part. So most get to silence.
The next day, in Bilbao, the tension multiplied. Interruptions in Enekuri and the nursery, and Gresca in the Gran Vía. The cyclists had to pass twice, but stayed in just one. No stage winner or podium. “The Basque Country a region known as the bastion of extreme left activists and separatists who like to protest,” said the owner of the team that promotes the name of Israel, Sylvan Adams, Canadian billionaire, Zionist and friend of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The antiisraeli movement entered full -haired and was no longer going to reduce. At the feet of Angliru, the escaped had to set foot for half a minute due to another interference. In addition, the Radio Vuelta broadcast began to hack, the frequency in which the teams and the organization are aware of everything that happens. The same listens that the attack of a corridor as a ‘Palestine, Libertad’ or ‘Boikot a Israel’.
It would not be useful for the team to erased the name of Israel del Millo as already made of the bus and cars, that their cyclists do not go through the control of signatures or the presentation of equipment, nor that neutralized outflows, if Adams and Netanyahu are disposed of their proximity to public praise. «Great work, Sylvan and Israel’s cycling team for not giving in to hatred and intimidation! Israel is proud of you! ”He wrote on Thursday. On Sunday, a protester caused the fall of Javi Romo, who has abandoned today, and the end of the stage was again in embers for a few minutes due to the tension and arrests that occurred in the finish line of Monforte de Lemos.
The race redoubled the number of police officers who would ensure security. Little more could do. They have no power to expel the Israel team, who won to participate in sports merits. Just invite you to leave the race, as they have done several times. This is also done by Aso, organizer of the tour and collaborator with the return. While the ICU, the only competent governing body to exclude them, discards that possibility under the protection of the International Olympic Committee, which has not separated Israel from any competition as it did at the time with Russia.
The team also does not attend to reasons to leave, since a precedent would sit down for which they understand that they could barely compete in the future. «We cannot retire here because then the same would happen in all competitions. Would it be better for us not to be here? Surely yes, but I would also like them to get in our place, ”said Óscar Guerrero, sports director of the Israeli team. So the hot potato has the return, which this Wednesday was going to be a participant of a security meeting to address the hottest points of the Madrid stages. Although in the caravan they have been playing with fire for days.
As in Bilbao, Mikel Landa was being one of the protagonists of the day until sports was eclipsed. The Alavés was at the head of the race with Egan Bernal. Two cyclists pursued by misfortune in recent times. Eager to get rid of. Suddenly, the plan was changed. They would not play the triumph uphill, as they would have liked. It would be downhill. In a decaffeinated sprint in which the Colombian imposed.
The INEOS was the first to cross a line more typical of an amateur race. With a judge, folder in hand, taking the times in the gutter. Unlike Bilbao Day, if there were an official winner. Although Bernal doesn’t feel it like that. Four years ago he was debated between life and death in a hospital in Colombia. Training, he stamped against a bus. He was able to stay tetrapléjico. The winner’s career of a tour winner was in check. Based on a lot of effort and determination, he walk again, to take a bike and to compete. This 2025 has been when the best level has been closer. First in the turn and now on the return.
Landa followed the same calendar. The falls have massacred him since his hatching back in 2015. Two stages and podium in the turn and another victory in the return. A decade later, his legs are still strongly. He is the protagonist of exciting episodes, but always without reward. A vertebra was fractured in the first stage of the turn, and after a hard rehabilitation, with his back still diminished, he was able to select a numerous leak to 60 kilometers from the finish line.
He was only Bernal and was confident of being able to leave him behind in the hard final climb. But the change of plans prevented seeing a attack of his. Gripped down. He only had the sprint’s trick, the worst. Alavés happens like other previous idols. Like Vicente Trueba or Marino Lejarreta. If they arrived in a group of seven cyclists, they were seventh. If ten, tenth. If they are two, second. Although it didn’t matter. Bernal was a good taste. The Calvary is such that these years have passed that for him it will be “a good day to remember.” Thus culminates a palmraés in which it has partial victory in the great three. In addition, in all of them, a triumph at a cut stage. For climatic reasons in the Tour of 2019 and in the 2021 turn. Now for the massacre of 63,000 people in the Gaza Strip. “I really wanted to win with the national shirt, which means a lot to me,” he culminates.
Almost six minutes came the platoon of the favorites headed by it. They were the only ones with a good face. They even joked to be collected, together with the rest, by team buses. The only ones who filmed for the final eight kilometers. In the opposite direction on a return of the revolt. The one that everything comes upside down.
