I’ve just got back from Gandia where, as those of you who have read the Peloton section will know, there was once a great free bike scheme called Labici, which made a small civilised place bigger and more civilised.

The scheme was introduced and operated by Gandia’s socialist administration. The bikes were red and the infrastructure orange and red. When the right came to power, as well as reintroducing bull fighting after a 20 year absence, they privatised the bike scheme. The new colours were cream and tan, the new bikes leaned towards the conservative too, more sit up and beg than mountain.

So Gandia was a free-bike-free zone. But late Good Friday as the crowds dispersed from the Plaza Meyor after the hoods, drums, chains and shoulder carried shrines of the Semana Santa procession, I noticed the bike dock beside the town hall was a new colour and quickly found a bar with wi-fi and discovered the scheme has become Saforbici and will be rolled out across the sub-region and run in-house by the administration that privatised it.

The new colour? Well Labici has risen from the red of the masses, through conservative browns to a ducal/papal purple, the colour of the birthplace of the Borgia popes.

Just as a footnote (a pedalnote?).  In the last regional elections one of the candidates for president of Valencia promised free bike schemes to every town with a population over 10,000.  Sadly he knew he stood no chance of election.