As the Tour de France begins in Barcelona, one unusual team has a job very few viewers ever think about. Before the cyclists and TV cameras arrive, they search the roads for giant penises painted on the tarmac and make them disappear.

The Tour de France team that erases rude road drawings

Patrick Dancoisne, a 65-year-old retired undertaker from north-eastern France, has spent 15 years working what may be the Tour’s strangest shift. Each morning before a stage, he and a colleague drive the route in a white van, scanning the asphalt and surroundings for obscene drawings, political slogans and unauthorised marketing messages that organisers do not want broadcast to the world.

The most common find, Patrick told L’Équipe in a 2025 profile, is anatomical. “The drawing we find most on the road is the male organ,” he said. “I turn them into owls, rabbits or butterflies. But this year, I’m making a lot of rabbits.”

The penis-to-woodland creature work is part of a wider logistical operation run by Doublet, a French company that handles signage, barriers and banners for the Tour. Patrick and his colleague are among an 80-person team that sleeps in sleeper buses, eats in mobile canteens and rebuilds the entire race infrastructure every night.

Why the job matters on live television

The Tour de France is broadcast globally across more than 190 countries and reaches an estimated 150 million viewers in Europe alone, according to the race’s official figures. Helicopter cameras and motorbike crews film the peloton from above and alongside, meaning anything painted on the road surface can end up on screen in real time. 

The problem drew widespread attention in 2016, when footage of giant genitalia painted on the tarmac circulated during the broadcast. Since then, the erasure team has become a permanent fixture of the race’s behind-the-scenes operation.

Patrick told L’Équipe: “It must be remembered that the Tour is seen all over the world. It must remain clean, and above all remain a celebration.”

As previously mentioned, political messages are also targeted. In 2025, Patrick said many road slogans referenced the Israel-Gaza conflict. Those are erased. Encouraging messages for riders, declarations of love and marriage proposals are left untouched (but only the clean ones).

From rude graffiti to butterflies and owls

Patrick and his team do have to get quite creative. Because there is rarely time to scrub off the paint, he uses quick-drying white paint and a roller to transform the offending image into something harmless. One part may become a tree trunk, two circles become an owl’s eyes… The team uses around 350 litres of paint across the three-week race, according to Spanish tech site Xataka.

Sometimes speed is the only option. When graffiti is spotted at short notice, Patrick and his colleague simply paint scribbled lines over it to make the image unrecognisable before the peloton races past. On a single day during the 2024 Tour, the pair reportedly found 18 anatomical drawings, nine syringes and 30 political messages.

Patrick has become something of a cult figure on the roadside. Fans recognise him and ask for autographs. “My nickname has become ‘the eraser’,” he told L’Équipe. “There are a lot of people who ask me for autographs. It makes me laugh. It’s part of the game.” 

Why the story matters in Spain today

The 2026 Tour de France starts in Barcelona on Saturday July 4, with a 19.6-kilometre team time trial from the Forum Marine Platform to Montjuic. It is the fourth time the race has visited Cataluña, following appearances in 1957, 1965 and 2009.

Barcelona City Council expects between 650,000 and 850,000 spectators for the opening stage, with major road closures across several districts. Stage 2 runs from Tarragona to Barcelona on Sunday July 5, and Stage 3 departs from Granollers on Monday July 6, heading into France.

The Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan regional government) has activated a Special Mobility Plan, warning that roads will close approximately three hours before riders pass through and reopen around one hour after the last cyclist.

For anyone watching the Barcelona stages on television, the tarmac will look spotless. However, if you happen to see any cute rabbits, butterflies, or owls painted on the road, you’ll know ‘the eraser’ has been at work.

Imagine thinking your dad had vanished abroad while travelling to the World Cup, only to discover he’d spent the last 10 days happily watching football in Barcelona bars, completely unaware anyone was looking for him. That’s exactly what happened to one English family after Michael Hewitt disappeared on his way to the United States.

What was meant to be a straightforward football journey turned into ten days of silence, confusion and growing panic back home. Michael had set off with everything planned, a stopover in Barcelona included, but somewhere along the way the trip unravelled in a way nobody expected, leaving his family convinced something serious had happened abroad.

A stopover that went quite wrong

Michael Hewitt, 65, had been travelling via Barcelona on his way to Boston, where he was due to continue on to the United States for the World Cup. Like many football fans making long-haul trips, the journey was broken into stages, with a short stop in Spain before the final flight.

It was during that stopover that things started to go wrong. He lost his mobile phone, and with it, the basic tools needed to continue travelling smoothly. Boarding passes, booking details, contact numbers and travel information were all tied to the device, and without it, the situation quickly became complicated. He missed his connecting flight to the United States and suddenly found himself stuck in Barcelona with no simple way to rearrange his plans or contact anyone at home. What should have been a short pause in a long journey turned into an unexpected dead end.

Silence that began to worry his family

At first, there was no immediate alarm. Travel delays happen all the time, and it is not unusual for messages to be missed while someone is abroad. But as time passed and there was still no contact at all, concern began to build.

Days turned into a week with no calls, no updates and no sign of movement. There was no reassurance that he had made it to his next destination or was continuing his journey as planned. The silence started to feel increasingly out of place, and what initially looked like a travel delay began to shift into something more worrying. Eventually, the lack of communication became impossible to ignore.

A missing persons report 

After losing contact for an extended period, his family reported him missing. From there, the situation escalated quickly. UK authorities became involved alongside consular staff in Barcelona, as attempts were made to trace his movements and understand where communication had broken down. But once the phone was lost, the trail became very difficult to follow.

There was little digital activity to track, and no direct contact to confirm his location or wellbeing. That lack of information created a growing sense of uncertainty. For his family, the hardest part was not knowing whether he was simply delayed, stranded, or in genuine trouble. Each passing day without answers made the situation harder to interpret.

Where was he? 

While concern was building back home, the reality was far less dramatic. Michael was still in Barcelona, oblivious to what was happening at home, content in his solitary man-world, continuing his trip in a way that made sense to him at the time.

He spent time in the city shopping, going to local bars, trying the cervezas and watching the football matches, following the world cup just like many other travelling football fans. What he did not realise was that back home, the situation had escalated far beyond a simple delay, two completely different versions of events were unfolding at the same time, without either side fully understanding the other.

How he was eventually found

In the end Michael was eventually located in Barcelona after being spotted by an off-duty British police officer who recognised him based on his Leeds United football shirt, which brought the search to an end. From his point of view, the situation had been a straightforward travel disruption.

He had lost his phone, missed his onward flight, and ended up staying longer in Barcelona while trying to sort things out, or so he says. He had no idea that during those same 10 days, his family had been living with uncertainty and that authorities had been involved in trying to trace his whereabouts.

Relief after days of uncertainty

Once confirmation came through that he was alive and safe (that is until his wife gets her hands on him)! the relief for his family was immediate. After more than a week of not knowing where he was or what had happened, they finally had answers.

The incident has also brought to light how dependent modern travel has become on mobile phones. With tickets, bookings and contact information stored digitally, losing a device can quickly create complications that extend far beyond inconvenience.

In the end, what should have been a straightforward football trip turned into a 10-day disappearance that caused panic and uncertainty back home, before ending in an unexpectedly ordinary way, with a man sitting in Barcelona bars, watching football, completely unaware he had become the subject of an international search.