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GET CREATIVE – VISCA EL BARÇA!

A hand-painted rolling tribute to the city of Barcelona (and on of its football clubs)

Text by Ross Piper , photos by Ross Piper - 25 March 2019

I was contacted regarding a project for a 3T Exploro from a cyclist and café owner in Barcelona. He had seen my “Topo di Torino” 3T Exploro with the “Get Creative” series on 3T’s blog (definitely check out that series!) and wanted a unique one of a kind design.

After some conversations via email regarding the design and some brainstorming based on his information and the ideas formed in my head, the sketch was created.

Now that the sketch had been agreed upon, it was time for a name. Traditionally I like giving names to all my frame designs. Juan had suggested “Visca el Barça”, and immediately I knew that was the winner. “Visca el Barça” is a local Catalan saying meaning long live Barcelona.

As requested by Juan he wanted everything to be black and white and the design to be hand painted onto the frame similar to the hand pin striped design on the “Topo di Torino” frame.

Check out some pictures during the process and the final product. Can’t wait to see this thing all built up and shredding all types of Roads around Europe or on display at the Bicioci Bike Cafe in Barcelona.

If you find yourself in Barcelona, check out the Café and see this beauty for yourself!

Ross Piper Designs

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11 responses to “GET CREATIVE – VISCA EL BARÇA!”

  1. J

    Jaime Astarloa says:

    27 March 2019

    Hi guys,
    Visca el barca means ‘long live football club Barcelona’ nothing related to the city itself. The guy was taking the piss!!! And you did a frame with a painted city. Next time will me more accurate to put messis face instead.

    Reply
    1. Gerard Vroomen says:

      27 March 2019

      The customer wanted to have the Barcelona cityscape, and when asked for a name suggested Visca el Barça. The football club is Barcelona, isn’t it? And most people in the English-speaking world just call the club Barcelona, nothing more. So that’s what it means and the cityscape is from Barcelona.

      Why? Not because the football club is the same as the city, but because the customer wanted the combination of that name and that cityscape. If he had wanted that name combined with the portrait of Mother Teresa, he would have gotten that. Not because it’s the same, but because with an RTP game you get exactly what you want. No reason he needs to put footballs or Messi on it if he doesn’t want to.

      Reply
      1. J

        Jaime Astarloa says:

        28 March 2019

        Yes I get it, is like calling a Frame ‘Heil Hitler, and painting the Cologne Cathedral right? ‘Visca el Barca’ it is so closely related to football that it is awkward to see a frame without anything about the football team. The customer is free to call it as he wants and Im not here to stop him doing so, of course, but it is just strange to see a Football chant to represent a city, not all the people in Barcelona supports FC Barcelona.

        Reply
        1. Gerard Vroomen says:

          28 March 2019

          You clearly don’t get it. You do win the prize for the quickest route on a bike-related blog to proving Godwin’s law though. Visca Espanyol.

          Reply
        2. J

          Jaime Astarloa says:

          28 March 2019

          Gerard I dont know why you take it so personal. just read the article : ‘“Visca el Barça” is a local Catalan saying meaning long live Barcelona” WRONG!!!!!!!! it means long live BARCA not Barcelona!! Visca Unió Atlètica d’Horta!!
          Godwin’s law its good to make people understand things, I love it!!!
          By the way I love 3T ‘Visca el Barca’ frame and graphics, great work. In general I love 3T components. Still not sure about the name but I will think about it!!

          Reply
        3. Gerard Vroomen says:

          28 March 2019

          Jaime, but it does mean Long Live Barcelona, with Barcelona referring to the club. He didn’t write “Long Live the city of Barcelona”, he wrote “Long Live Barcelona” and in English that can be the club or the city. See wikipedia: “Futbol Club Barcelona, commonly known as Barcelona and familiarly as Barça.” So it is perfectly correct to translate Barça as Barcelona when referring to the FC. To then translate Barcelona back into the city instead of into Barça, you can do that but it doesn’t mean that is what the owner wanted you to do. And besides a soccer fan he’s also a fan of his city, hence the cityscape, seems reasonable to me.

          As to why I take it personally, if I came to your home and scribbled Heil Hitler on your door, you’d take it personally too. Anyway, too many linguistic misunderstandings here it seems, all good. Let’s all go for a ride.

          Reply
        4. J

          Jaime Astarloa says:

          28 March 2019

          Hi again Gerard! With all the respect let me clarify something….. The problem , probably you will need to be a Spanish-Catalan speaker to understand, it is what it is call in the Spanish grammar “personal pronouns’, in “Visca el Barca” “el” is the personal pronoun and “el” refers only to the football club and never to the city of Barcelona because the city of Barcelona it is “la”. Do this test in google: write “El Barcelona” and you will see that all the links refers to the football team. Now write “La Barcelona” and you will see that all the links refers to the city. So translating “Visca el Barça” as Long live Barcelona is incorrect, you need to translate that as long live football club Barcelona. Also it is not correct translating Barça as Barcelona (and back) because it is not a translation it is the nickname of the Football team or shortway of saying football club Barcelona. Summarizing there is only a right way of translating “Visca el Barça” and it is Long live football club Barcelona, Long live Barcelona is not only ambiguos but is missing words in the translation(“el”). The customer is free to choose the name he wants but the article it is not properly written-translated, so if I am looking for your components and I see a bycicle call “Visca el Barça” I think Im going to see a frame with the Barça colors or with Messi not a frame with the Barcelona city landscape.
          Im also not writting Heil Hitler in you door as that its and act of vandalism, Im just writing a comment (becasue something is not correct) as an act of freedom.
          P.S I will be more than welcome to have a ride with you and learn probably more than couple of things from someone with your background( Im also Mechanical engineer specialized in composites, could you be interested in my CV? Im a nice guy in the real life!)
          Sorry to piss you off!!

          Reply
          1. Gerard Vroomen says:

            29 March 2019

            Hi Jaime, everybody agrees Visca el Barça means long live the football club, so there is no disagreement over the Catalan sentence and hence my understanding of the language is not in question (and as an aside, the editor of all Get Creative stories happens to be Catalan, so no problem there). He’s also the reason we’re even having this discussion, he is laughing his head off.

            The disagreement is on the English side, and on that side I’m pretty confident. “Long Live Barcelona” in English can mean two things. “Long live the club” and “Long live the city”. The translator meant the former, so a perfect translation of Visca el Barça, you interpreted the latter, which would be incorrect.

            Reply
        5. J

          Jaime Astarloa says:

          29 March 2019

          Hi Gerard,
          I can imagine all laughing about this, no less. There is a Spanish saying; “cuando un tonto sigue un camino, el camino se acaba y el tonto sigue” no disrespect it is just a saying.
          My partner is also laughing and angry telling me; why are you losing your time in this instead of doing something useful like saving the planet.
          In her free time as a hobby she is Spanish grammar teacher and she worked in the european parliament as translator of english, spanish and Italian among other languages. She also translates legal documents so there are no ambiguity’s and corrects companies grammar and translations to other languages. Apart from that she is a FC Barcelona supporter since she was young.
          So you can imagine how are we laughing about this and the only thing than comes into my mind is the Spanish saying….
          I bought recently your new Zero 25 LTD stealh seatpost, I was so impressed I bought another one for my MTB. Thats a great product, congratulate the designers!!

          Reply
  2. D

    Denis Champagne says:

    25 March 2019

    Do you plan incorporating a integrate cockpit for the Exploro Ltd soon?

    Reply
    1. Gerard Vroomen says:

      25 March 2019

      Hi Denis, we’re always working on things but right now we don’t have anything like that on the roll for the Exploro Ltd. And if we did do something like that, we’d try to make it retrofittable.

      Reply
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