MOTORCYCLING IN ALBACETE; A LONG TRADITION. When in the 1990s, the speed circuit in Albacete "La Torrecica" opened its doors, the first races took place,we realised that we were, not only before the birth of a circuit, but before a long tradition. In fact, Albacete has had a deeprooted interest in motorcycling. Chronicles tell that in Albacete, some years before the Civil War, the fires speed track competitions had already taken place, at which time most of them were not asphalt; but after the Civil War, these competitions were gaining more and more interest and, every year they were a regular stop within the sport schedule of the fair in Albacete. The great English single cylinders: Norton and the Velocette, the ones that were set apart from the Italian mechanic gems of four-stroke engines. At the end of the forties, at the beginning of the fifties, when there was a time in which sidecars were popular among the people from Albacete. In Albacete, glorious and also dramatic moments were lived. At the beginning of the sixties, Spanish motorcycling experienced a golden age with Busquets, Herrero and, of course, with Ramón Torras, who rode Montesas, Bultacos, Ossas and so on. With these pilots and these motorcycles, in September the streets of Albacete were full of a burnt oil odour. Actually, I am sure that there are people who still have not forgotten that sensation. Those races went on till 1968, a year in which began a dangerous period for motorcycling in Albacete, until Moto Club Albacete's people found a new site in the industrial zone called Campollano. This industrial zone provided new hopes and big races, that finished in the eighties when the MOTORCICLING' Series arrived and whose popular success was the first step for the circuit "La Torrecica". In September, 1990, the firest motorcycle race in the new circuit in Albacete took place. The truth is that in that moment the past and the future became one; a future that with those installations would provide in the keeping of a long tradition.