For the past twenty years, I’ve gone on an autumn cycle tour in Europe. That first trip to Istria and northern Croatia with two friends, and I was hooked: to the airy freedom, to sharpened senses through changing landscapes, to the independence, a youthfulness returned.
We bring our bikes for the week-long trip. Travel light, letting debit cards do the heavy lifting; depend on a few local words and phrases, and on the goodwill of strangers. September of 2025, we flew into Barcelona airport.
I’m the map person; it’s been a lifetime’s interest. But maps give little sense of the changes in dialect and language. For this trip, I had learned a few basic Catalan phrases: Si us plau (thank you), una cayna (a beer from the tap) and Que parla anglès? (do you speak English?). They worked well and with a smile, and the body language of thank you goes a long way in any unfamiliar culture.
We took a figure-of-eight route that looped through Girona down to the coast, north along by the sea and into France, overnighting to see Salvador Dalí’s imaginative weirdness in Figueres, and on to Girona, for a final overnight in the heart of the old city.
And Salam Alaykum? I first used the phrase some fifty years ago returning overland at the end of a two-year stint as a volunteer in the Western Pacific; roughly following the Hippy Trail back to Ballymena in County Antrim. But the greeting had been lost to memory. It is, however, scratched in a worn notebook from that time, along with sketched fragments of that immersive journey through many cultural landscapes. Dipping into it occasionally, I’m in awe at how my younger self lived by his wits and travelled on a tiny budget for months on end.
One Saturday morning two years ago, at Buncrana’s Park Run, wearing my Sanctuary Runners T-shirt, I was assistant timekeeper to Efe. A speaker played the hip-swinging track Salaam Alekum from the 1980s High-Life International album. Efe suggested I play it for Adenike. When I did, Adenike beamed and said Walaykum Salam. Peace be on you, with her return of, and on you peace also, the Islamic greeting I’d forgotten.
Girona and the Costa Brava were a cyclist’s paradise: the city criss-crossed with marked, traffic-lighted routes, the countryside full of dedicated greenways and trails.
We initially used an El Carrilet route that followed the bed of an old narrow-gauge railway, taking one to the coast in a short day’s cycle. The coastal cycling in this part of Catalonia is stunningly beautiful. Big sky sea views after long challenging gradients. Resting under shading pines, the years fall away; a breeze coming off the azure white-topped water far below, a sandy heat of scented pine, herbs and dried grass.
At a small two-star hotel on the coast, a young man, I took to be of North African heritage, was dealing efficiently with our booking. While he did the paperwork, a text bounced into my phone from Adenike in Buncrana, Salam alaykum it began. I read it out, he laughed and said, Walaykum salam, send that back. It was a simple but yet affirming exchange that raised a smile for both of us.
The following Saturday, we stopped for lunch, feeling lucky to find an isolated restaurant just off the old main road, on our route back to the Spanish border. Nearby, the elevated motorway thrummed with traffic. The casual lunch was a delight of French savoury and sweet dishes, under a packed terrace, draped with airy plants. Well-fed and charged with coffee and with a parting Si us plau, we set off uphill.
After some three kilometres of steady climbing, we stopped in shade to cool and take on water.
Three men walked downhill, passing where we perched on the metal barrier rail. Salam Alaykum seemed appropriate. The older of them stopped, turned, and beamed with some form of recognition. And took on, it seemed to me, a greater assurance. Salam, he said with a slight nod. Le Boulou? he asked, pointing downhill toward a town by that name.
Cinq kilomètres, peut-être? I replied. We exchanged a few other words in broken French and Spanish. He smiled and walked off with a generous wave. Most likely, they had walked across the border to take up some migrant’s work, plentiful along the French and Spanish Mediterranean coast. They carried nothing that I could see; their shoes were well worn.
Spain hosts many North Africans, economic migrants and seasonal workers, some with their families. They cultivate, pick and pack fruit and olives that flow continuously towards the tables of northern Europeans. Others work in hospitality, that great Jekyll-and-Hyde descriptor. Undocumented for the most part. Yet they have not been invisible to those who recognise their value.
In January 2026, the Spanish government announced it would regularise the position of some half a million foreign migrant workers, citing reasons of ‘economic and social cohesion’.
To all of us who hope and work for a better life together, Salam Alaykum seems a fitting greeting, from Buncrana to Barcelona. I’ll use it when I can.
