100 years of city buses in Barcelona: From horses to hydrogen

Did you know the city’s first motorized buses were hybrid?

This year marks a centenary since the introduction of the first motorized public bus transport service in the city of Barcelona. Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB), the local public transit operator is marking the occasion in a variety of ways with a view to presenting the history and progress of this valuable service.

It all started on 22 March 1922, when the Compañía General de Autobuses de Barcelona (CGA) was founded with the aim of operating four motorized bus lines. CGA is one of the ancestors of the current TMB municipal company.

Some interesting history

Curiously enough that moment was not the first attempt to establish bus services in the forward-looking Catalonian capital. Even further back, in 1906, a private company, called La Catalana, decided to replace its horse-drawn carriages with motorized vehicles but its project was short-lived. The reason?

The local tram operator (Tranvías de Barcelona) saw the buses as its rivals for the commuter market. So, it used its influence to encourage a boycott of the bus services and La Catalana went bust.

Nowadays, things seem quite different with public transit considered an essential service to be provided by local governments and modular integration rather than competition is the trend. However, even when CGA was set up there was still some opposition from the tramway company, as the view back then was that buses should only be used for long distances.

In a way, the tram lobby was ahead of its time in thinking, though possibly for the wrong reasons. Trams were electrified and thus environmentally friendly, although that was not really the chief concern at the time.

On 14 October 1922, the CGA put into operation the first regular urban bus service, a ring road that passed through Estació de França and Via Laietana, which at that time was banned for tram traffic. The following year they would launch the other three lines that connected with heavily populated working-class areas of Barcelona in need of public transport.

To provide the service, they initially imported the vehicles needed from England, which is why they would be painted red in contrast to the dark yellow of the trams.

Tranvías de Barcelona initially continued its opposition struggle, until it finally realized that the arrival of the bus service was unstoppable and very well received by the public. For this reason, they changed the strategy, applied for and obtained some concessions to operate buses, and took control of most of the CGA's actions in less than two years.

Some of the ways to mark the occasion

An intriguing fact about those first buses delivered from England was that they actually ran on hybrid petrol-electric engines, making them the first such vehicles there and ancestors of the contemporary hybrid vehicles.

These buses were produced by the Tilling-Stevens company and were in use until the end of the Civil War in Spain in 1936. In order to commemorate the centenary, TMB has managed to collect parts in order to restore one of these original buses in order to present it to the public.

Likewise, the TMB Foundation has promoted the publication of a book written by Ricard Fernández i Valentí, a great connoisseur of the history of public transport and of Barcelona, which presents the transformation of the public bus services in the city during the period. The book is called The buses in Barcelona: 100 years of networking (1922-2022).

The book analyses the various milestones in time, such as fare integration or the New Bus Network, and also mentions the recently-approved TMB's 2025 Strategic Plan. It describes the evolution of rolling stock, from the beginnings to the latest models, innovation in terms of fuels and the path to a fleet that is already 100% accessible and that is moving towards achievement sustainability and zero emissions with full electrification and hydrogen fuel cells.

The book incorporates a QR code that redirects readers to an accessible digital version of the document. It will also soon be available in bookstores and also at some of the events that TMB will celebrate on the occasion of the centenary throughout this year.