Bassella’s Museu de Moto

Somehow, I’d scored a brand spanking new 2010 Triumph Thunderbird for a long weekend in Catalonia (Eastern Spain). So, naturally, I was plotting on Google Maps to figure out where to take it. My master plan was to motor over the Pyrenees through the tiny mountain nation of Andorra to France, explore Carcasonne and Toulouse and ride back down the Mediterranean coast to Barcelona.

Searching for things to see and do on the way out, I happened on Bassella and the Museu de Motos. The Museu is way out in the middle of nowhere, but that is often where you find the best roads. If you drew a triangle around Andorra, Barcelona and Lleda, Bassella would be right in the middle about 90 to 120 minutes from each of them. Two thirds of the way from Barcelona to the Museu is made up of glorious back roads that took me past castles and sleepy old villages, all wrapped up in green, rolling hills.

The Museu de Motos is on the C-14, just a kilometer south of its intersection with C-26.

Half of the building taken up with a huge dining room, presumably for events. There’s a children’s play area, and a sandwich shop (Pans and Co). Prices (as in all of Calalonia) are good and the food high quality. Entrance to the Museu itself is 6 Euros, payable in the small gift shop area which has a number of reproduced t-shirts and knickknacks from a number of brands.

The museum’s displays start at the dawn of the motorcycle when they were barely more than bicycles with motors adapted to them.

Funnily enough, those are making a comeback as cheap transportation. The majority of the museum is devoted to the first half-century of motorcycling, from the turn of the 20th century to the 1940s, and splits this time into two eras: Early Motorcycles though the 20s, and a Golden Age between the Depression and WWII, just to show what’s good for the world is not necessarily good for the sport. It was in this second age that many of the features of motorcycles as we know them today were developed, and they took on the classic shapes that are still represented in cruiser motorcycles today.

Along with a stunning collection of bikes are great old ads, archival photography, technical drawings and more blown up to poster size on the walls of the Museu.

What was really cool as an American visiting here for the first time were all the old brands I’d never heard of before, that never made it to the States in large numbers. Brands like Gnome Rhone, Terrot, Automoto, Ribetti, ABC, FSN, and Tehuelche are represented displaying a diverse collection of beautiful machinery that I’d never have seen otherwise..

There were also more familiar, but also defunct, brands like Bultaco, Excelsior Henderson, BSA, Cleveland, Velocette, Scott, Rudge, and Norton. In fact while I was familiar with Norton as a brand, Id’ never seen so many really old examples as the Museu had on hand, including several pristine racers from the 1920s.

Naturally most of the more familiar brands are represented as well, though less so than one would expect, with just a couple Harley-Davidsons and one Moto Guzzi, but scads of BMWs, Indians, Triumphs and Ducatis. Even among these more familiar brands were several rarities and bikes that never made US shores.

Also on the main floor are displays of competition motorcycles and Spanish motorcycling, along with areas devoted to their major sponsors including the city of Lleida, an automotive club, and Montesa, the last Spanish manufacturer, now owned by Honda.

On the lower floor is a rotating exhibit, which during my visit was devoted to the rivalry of Spanish brands Montesa, OSSA and Bultaco through the 60s and 70s. I’d heard of the brads before (and my dad had even owned a Bultaco), but this was a cool overview of their heyday including motocross, trials, off-road, on-road and special purpose motorcycles. The exhibition, titled Eternas Rivales, runs through February 2010.

Also on the lower floor, but viewable thought a hole in the roof from the upper floor, is a 1930’s-era workshop with period-era tools and machines, as well as a BMW up on a workstand.

It was interesting to see another country’s/continent’s look at motorcycling in all its nostalgia, and important to note the differences. Europeans are race crazy, more than we are, and yet are happy to ride a bike that is not a race winner to work every day. With good public transportation, motorcycles are a much more interesting alternative to owning a car, unlike here, where it’s almost always a recreational accessory.

The Museu and the town of Bassella itself is very involved in the worldwide motorcycle community, and education. Going to the town’s tourist website it’s obvious how true this is with just about all the upcoming events and promotions are about 4×4 trucks or motorcycles. There’s an offroad park and a motocross track nearby, as well as a school for learning how to ride bikes.

I never made it past Andorra (which was mostly a waste, but that’s a story for another time), but still completed a loop up to the Pyrenees (definitely not a waste) and back on the fun and comfortable Triumph.

http://museumoto.bassella.com/en/

http://www.bassella.com/en/index.php