The Fig of Plaza de Navarro Rodrigo

Plaza de Navarro Rodrigo is one of Benalúa's oldest squares, laid out on land the Marqués de Benalúa donated to the city and named for the nineteenth-century politician and writer who represented Alicante in parliament. A fountain, a children's playground and a kiosk share the square with this one Indian laurel fig, its canopy wide enough, 27 metres across, that it shades most of the gardens on its own. The tree is one of six sites across Alicante where the city has put up an information panel on its ficus population, alongside Plaza Gabriel Miró and Parque de Canalejas, warning against climbing the aerial roots or damaging the bark. Unlike the two celebrity figs a kilometre away, this one carries no recorded age at all. The Valencian government's register lists its measurements and its protected status and nothing else. It nearly had company. A former mayor once proposed moving the giant Ficus de Benalúa here from its garden on Calle San Agatángelo, a transplant Benalúa's own residents fought off as too dangerous for a tree already past its first century. The plan died, the Benalúa fig never left its garden, and Navarro Rodrigo kept its one fig standing quietly among the flower beds instead.