The Palms of Casa de la Misericordia

Four palm trees have stood in the courtyard of a former orphanage for over a century, planted around 1904 when the building still ran as the Casa de la Misericordia, a charitable institution founded in 1583 that raised abandoned girls into the 20th century. California fan palms are native to desert oases in the American Southwest and northern Mexico, an odd match on paper for a Gothic Revival courtyard in the Raval, but the species tolerates poor soil and long dry spells well enough to have become a fixture of Mediterranean city planting. For decades the courtyard itself was closed to the public, part of an institutional building tucked behind Carrer Elisabets that most of the Raval walked past without ever seeing inside. That changed recently when a cafe opened in the garden, putting four palms that had grown for a century behind closed doors back in view of anyone who orders a coffee. The building continues to house a school; the palms, remarkably, have outlasted several changes of institutional purpose above their heads.