The first railway on the Iberian Peninsula ran from Barcelona to Mataró, opening in 1848, and the line still runs along the shore, now crowded with commuters rather than curious passengers. Mataró is the capital of the Maresme, a working city of over a hundred thousand people with an old town of narrow streets, a busy port and a long seafront. It is not a resort, and it does not pretend to be, which is part of its appeal.
Mataró has an early work by Antoni Gaudí, long before the Sagrada Família made him famous: the Nau Gaudí, an industrial shed built for a workers' cooperative in the 1880s, with elegant wooden arches that foreshadow his later structural experiments. It now houses a contemporary art collection. The Basílica de Santa Maria, in the old town, has a richly decorated Baroque chapel, and the streets around it are pleasant for a short walk.
For riders, Mataró is mostly a practical place to start and finish a ride, with plenty of fuel, food and parking. The inland roads are what make it worth it. A few kilometres away, Argentona marks the start of the climb over the Coll de Parpers towards Granollers, a well-loved local road with a run of tight bends through pine and oak woods, popular with motorcyclists at weekends. Beyond it lie the Montseny massif, the Vallès plains and eventually the long roads north into the Pyrenees, including the N-260, which runs along the southern flank of the mountains.
The coast road through the Maresme is slow and urban, with traffic lights, roundabouts and plenty of traffic, especially in summer. The C-32 motorway alongside it is faster but tolled. Leave early in the morning, when the light is soft and the roads are quieter, and head inland as soon as possible. Mataró has a long sandy beach, and at the end of a hot summer day a swim in the Mediterranean is the obvious way to wash off the dust before dinner.