Los Tres Amigos

Three palms standing together at the entrance to a single street have become a landmark specific enough to have lent their nickname to nearby shops and a bar. Los Tres Amigos are believed to be the last visible trace of a private estate garden that once stood in this part of Valencia, before the neighbourhood around Plaza de Espana was fully urbanised in the early 20th century, leaving the three Phoenix canariensis specimens standing where a garden wall or gate might once have framed them. Palms of this species can live well over a century, and these are estimated at around a hundred years old, though no individual planting record survives to confirm an exact date. In January 2015 the local Abastos-Finca Roja neighbourhood association formally adopted the trio as a protected ensemble, a grassroots gesture of the kind more often given to a single monumental specimen than to a street corner planting. They remain, in the association's own words, a gateway to the street they mark.