The Avocado of Teatre Lliure

An avocado tree does not usually end up on a list of remarkable urban trees, but Barcelona catalogued this one in 1996, and at roughly 80 years old and 13 metres tall it has outlived every use of the building beside it. That building opened as the Palau de l'Agricultura for the 1929 International Exposition, spent decades afterward as the city's central flower market, sat empty for years, and reopened in 2001 as the Teatre Lliure. The tree, planted around 1946 somewhere in the gap between exposition pavilion and flower market, is older than the theatre by 55 years. Persea americana is native to central Mexico and normally grown for fruit rather than shade, which makes a mature specimen this size unusual in a European city: 1.6 metres round with a canopy 15 metres across, spreading well beyond what most people picture when they hear avocado tree. It stands on Placa Margarida Xirgu, in front of the theatre entrance, free to walk past whether or not anyone is seeing a show that night. Nobody has recorded whether it still fruits.