Ondategiko Haritza (Roble de Ondategi)

Until the Spanish Civil War, the village of Ondategi held its summer festival under this oak, and the music was one accordion. The San Lorenzo romería fell on 10 August, and the village could afford paid musicians for only one feast a year, Santa Lucía on 13 December. So in August a single accordionist played in the shade of the Sarragoa oak, and that was the party. The tree has the room for it. It is a pedunculate oak 20 metres tall with a crown about 30 metres across, standing on the campa of Sarragoa, the communal meadow at the southwest edge of the village, at the end of the street that runs to the left of the church. For generations it gave shade and shelter to livestock and people alike. The Basque Government declared it a Singular Tree in 1997, one of ten in Álava, and the published measurement puts the trunk at 4.9 metres round at chest height. Locally it goes by several names: Ondategiko Haritza, Sarragoako haritza, the Roble de Sarragoa, and the plainer Árbol gordo de Zanagua, the fat tree. Every source calls it centenario, which means old and nothing more precise. Nobody has published an age, and a trunk of that size does not settle it on its own. If you know when the romería under it began, that would be a start. The romería under its crown did not survive the war. The oak did.