Vuelta Skelter: Riding the Remarkable 1941 Tour of Spain

In the gloriously chaotic finale to his ill‑advised trilogy on cycling’s Grand Tours, Tim Moore sets out to recreate one of the most extraordinary victories in the sport’s history. In 1941, Spanish rider Julian Berrendero won the Vuelta a España just months after enduring 18 brutal months in Franco’s concentration camps for his Republican sympathies — a triumph forged in hardship, resilience and political turmoil.

Seventy‑nine years later, Moore becomes obsessed with Berrendero’s story. Armed with a borrowed vintage bike plastered with the great man’s name, he decides — in the middle of a global pandemic — to retrace the entire 4,409‑kilometre route of that wartime race. What follows is a wonderfully unhinged odyssey of scorching heat, endless climbs, lonely roads, fleeting glory and a generous helping of humiliation.

As he pedals across Spain, Moore weaves in the still‑raw history of the Spanish Civil War, uncovering the tragedies, divisions and lingering scars that shaped both Berrendero’s life and the landscape he rode through. Meanwhile, the locals — torn between welcoming the country’s only foreign visitor and dunking him and his filthy bike into a vat of antiviral gel — provide a steady stream of comic encounters.

By turns moving, absurd and unexpectedly profound, this is Tim Moore at his best: a man in way over his head, pedalling through history, hardship and hilarity in pursuit of a forgotten cycling hero.