Biking in Granada: A Survival Guide - Marci

I’ve quickly had to realize that Granada is not the most bike-friendly city, but it is not as bad as some people think it is. When I originally told him the idea of buying a bike, Dani said “You’re probably going to die” – clearly that has been an exaggeration so far. But there are plenty of problems related to infrastructure for biking and quite simply, not enough people use bikes.

Granada has a lot of cyclists, but the vast majority of them are people doing cycling for sport. You see big groups or individual riders in full lycra outfits, heading up to the mountains on MTBs to hit some trails or racing bikes, to do some serious distance and elevation. Other than a few dedicated Deliveroo riders, there are not many people who actually use bikes within the city. I barely see any commuters riding their bike.

The Infrastructure

While I also mainly use my bike to go on trips and do exercise, I also sometimes use it to go to faraway places in Granada that would be inconvenient to walk to, like Decathlon. The first thing I noticed is the complete lack of places to park bikes. The vast majority of shops and public places do not have a single dedicated spot for bike parking. Even if places do, they are the ones where you can’t actually safely lock the bike, just the wheel.

Bike lanes and bike routes are also an issue. Some areas have great bike routes, like along the ring road (the motorway around Granada), but other important routes will either completely lack these, or they’ll be constructed in the most ridiculous ways. The bike path along Camino de Ronda, a very important route, is a great example of this. It’s a 2x2 lane road with a concrete divider in the middle and the bike path is put up on the sidewalk on the one side. Of course, this makes every single crossing dangerous for bikers and cars alike, but the worst part is that every few blocks, the sidewalk narrows. When the sidewalk narrows, the bike path disappears and re-appears one or two blocks later. What should a biker do here? Merge into traffic? Blast through the pedestrians? Push the bike?

Continuing along Camino de Ronda, another similarly ridiculous practice emerges: the huge garbage containers for household trash and recycling are simply stored on the bike route. Now finally they’ve at least painted around them, but it is still a very stupid idea. Imagine the outrage if they stored those containers on the car lanes!

All of this means that I usually ignore the inner-city bike paths and just merge into traffic. In the outer neighborhoods and the countryside, the bike paths are usually better and more common.

The Cars

While I’ve heard from some people that cars are really ignorant of bikers in Granada, the situation is actually not terrible. Having biked a lot in Budapest and Cambridge all year-round, I can say that people here are pretty similar in most respects. There will always people who are impatient, who cut you off or overtake too close. The only real difference I can see is that people here are not used to bikers in the city as much, so it takes them by surprise and some drivers panic or get confused. Most of them do just fine.

If you bike out of the city, along one of the popular routes like the one up to Güéjar Sierra, cars are amazingly courteous. I’m not kidding, I’ve never seen so many cars be so patient and be so careful about overtaking. Almost without exception, cars overtake with at least 1.5-meter distance, but usually a whole lane width. I’ve had cars patiently sit behind me for half a kilometer because they couldn’t overtake comfortably on the windy road. In most other countries, they would just blast past you, yet here they wait. Bikers and cars also work together to help safe overtaking, with the bikers waving the car to overtake when they see the coast is clear.

Bike Theft

I don’t have statistics for bike theft, I do know it is quite a problem in Granada, especially in areas near the bus station. I see a lot of bikes with stolen seats or stolen wheels locked up in places. Someone just takes the parts off that can be quickly removed. Because of this, I’m quite weary of leaving my bike unsupervised for a long period of time. But around shopping centers and in the countryside, I’ve never had a problem

Conclusion

Granada definitely gets a bad rep for cycling. While cycling within the city is still not very popular, the Sierra Nevada attracts so many cyclists that cars are actually surprisingly used to sharing the road with them. While I don’t always enjoy taking the bike to destinations within the city, I am super happy that I got a bike when I arrived here, because I can visit so many fantastic areas around the city that I would otherwise not be able to get to!