A ghost wanders among the Unipublic offices in Madrid, where the map with the stages of the Vuelta 2026 is drawn. It is red, green, white and black, like the flag of Palestine, the memory of which still gives nightmares to Javier Guillén, the race director, who waved by the thousands in the ditches of the last Vuelta in the hands of the activists and people who, protesting against the participation of the Israel-Premier Tech team, imposed the cutting and cancellation of some stages and prevented the race from reaching the final finish line, at the foot of the Cibeles fountain in Madrid, and the final podium remained unused.
That Sunday last September, Guillén lived one of the worst experiences that a race organizer could fear, and just four weeks after the presentation – which took place on 17 December, in the glamorous Monte Carlo of roses, jet set and casinos on the route of the Vuelta del 26, which will start on 22 August from the Principality of the Grimaldi – his fears were once again revived by the news coming from the Canary Islands, where he hoped to find a mooring port once again, except once again once a final of the Vuelta a Madrid. The program was magnificent, five days in the Canary Islands with stops on the two largest islands, Gran Canaria and Tenerife, climbs of Teide and Pico de las Nieves, a time trial…
According to the newspaper, the negotiations would cost each island 2.3 million euros The Province, they ran aground. According to the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, the only reason for not concluding the agreement with the Vuelta is the probable presence of the Israeli team despite its owner, Sylvan Adams, having announced that he will change his name and nationality (he will settle in Switzerland) and that his main sponsor, the Canadian company Premier Tech, will stop financing him. “Basically there is no change,” the Sports Minister of the Gran Canaria Cabildo, Aridany Romero, told La Provincia. “The team continues to be a way to mask the genocidal conduct of the State of Israel through sport.”
Instead of the ban on the Canary Islands and Madrid, the Vuelta on the 26th will end in Granada, according to the newspaper Granada today. It will be a full weekend in the province of Granada on September 12 and 13, with a final Sunday planned at the Alhambra whenever National Heritage authorizes it.
The Vuelta will not return to Madrid in 2026, the most repeated end of the race in the group’s 80-year history, and whose City Council, chaired by José Luis Martínez Almeida (PP), has not yet paid Unipublic the 350,000 euros it had pledged. Although the mayor, extremely horrified by some pro-Palestinian demonstrations for which he blamed Pedro Sánchez, immediately announced that he would pay what was agreed even if the stage has not actually arrived in the capital, Unipublic confirms that the money has not yet arrived. “So far the Municipality has paid nothing for the Madrid stage. I don’t know how the issue will end because they are studying it given what has happened and any step must always be taken in compliance with the strictest legality”, say sources from the organizer of the Vuelta. Beyond the Palestinian issue and the after-effects of cycling, Unipublic has also estimated that the Formula 1 Grand Prix will be held in Madrid on the same Sunday, 13 September, as the Vuelta final.
In the last 47 years, the editions organized by Unipublic, which rescued the Vuelta from the Basque Country, where it usually finished between 1955 and 1978, the capital has been the final of the Vuelta on 42 occasions. In 2021, 2014 and 1993, financed by Xacobeo, it ended in Santiago de Compostela. In 1985 he did it in Salamanca and in 1986 in Jerez. They are the only exceptions to a rule that even led to a Vuelta final, that of 2002, right on the grass of the Santiago Bernabéu.
