The Palm of Vicente Peris

This palm survived being in the way twice, first of traffic and then of a demolition crew, thanks to one head gardener's refusal to let it simply be cut down. It originally grew in the courtyard of a Marist Brothers school at Plaza Mirasol, until the early 1960s, when that building and others nearby were demolished to widen what had been the narrow street of Les Granotes into today's Calle Poeta Querol. Rather than lose the tree, head gardener Vicente Peris asked mayor Adolfo Rincon de Arellano to close the surrounding streets to traffic for a single night, and the palm was loaded onto two trucks and moved under cover of darkness to a new home at the start of Avenida de Aragon, beside La Alameda, where it still stands today. The relocation is documented specifically enough, down to the mayor's name and the two-truck detail, that it reads as verified local history rather than embellished legend, a rare case on this list of a tree's survival being an entirely deliberate human choice rather than an accident of neglect.