The Split Plane of the Alpargate

A cyclone tore this tree in half and it is still twenty-four metres tall. What stands over the Plaza del Cristo de Gracia today is the surviving portion of something that was once roughly twice the size, and the municipal catalogue rates it as very probably one of the oldest planes in Cordoba. Its crown occupies twenty of those twenty-four metres, so from beneath it there is essentially nothing else to see. It shades a Baroque fountain that the city paid for with the proceeds of three bullfights held in 1747, and which was moved to this square from the Puerta Nueva in 1950. During Holy Week the brotherhood of the Padres de Gracia carries its floats in and out beneath the branches, which is the one week of the year the tree has to make room for something. The catalogue's own photograph records a small indignity worth mentioning, because it says a lot about how cities treat their big trees: someone has bolted an electrical box to the trunk.