This thesis examines the banal nationalism of La Vuelta Ciclista a España (Spain’s national cycling tour) in the post-Franco period. In light of recent work completed on post-Franco Spanish nationalism, this project provides a robust empirical analysis of four newspaper’s coverage of the race between 1975 and 2000. The object of this thesis is to provide empirical ballast to a number of hypotheses and suggestions that have been made, primarily as to the role of informal symbols such as sport in the immediate post-Franco period where formal national symbols suffered a delegitimisation. There are two major themes in this work: firstly, a theme that comprises Spanish national identity and nationalism in the post-Franco period, and secondly, a theoretical theme that looks to interrogate and develop Michael Billig’s theory of Banal Nationalism (Billig 1996). Utilising Billig’s original publication, as well as other work on Le Tour de France, this thesis constructs a mixed quantitative/qualitative content analysis of newspapers in this period, seeking to expand our knowledge of informal national symbols beyond areas, such as football, where analyses have already been done. Newspapers from the main territorial cleavage in the country, Spain and Catalonia, are represented in an examination of the growth of La Vuelta as a national symbol as well as how this has been mediated across political and territorial lines.