What is the oldest tree in Zaragoza?

No source establishes it. The city measured its 57 singular trees in 2004 and 2005 and recorded no ages, so the honest answer is that the strongest candidates are the trees in Parque Bruil that survive from the gardens laid out there after 1842, at roughly 150 to 180 years.

Can you walk between them?

Yes. The four run a little under two kilometres from Parque Bruil in the Tenerias quarter west to the Paraninfo on Plaza Basilio Paraiso, roughly following the course of the Huerva, which runs buried under the Paseo de la Constitucion for the last stretch. Two of the four are in Parque Bruil itself, a couple of hundred metres apart.

Which is the one that was on television?

The hackberry in Parque Bruil, known locally as the almez or the litonero. Neighbourhood associations put it forward for Spain's Arbol del Ano 2026 and it came third nationally in the December 2025 vote with 1,799 votes, behind a lime in Avila and a red gum in Valencia.

Do they cost anything to see?

Parque Bruil and Calle Asalto are free and open. The Paraninfo is a working university building with a library and a natural sciences museum, so the yew in its grounds depends on the building being open.

How do you know these trees are still standing?

Honestly, for three of the four we do not know for certain. The city measured its singular trees in 2004 and 2005 and has not published an update, and trees in that catalogue have been lost since: a hackberry in this same park dried out and was felled, and a honey locust came down in 2014. The hackberry below was confirmed alive in December 2025 when it came third in Spain's tree of the year vote. The other three we place from the catalogue and from later mentions, and if you get there and one of them is gone, tell us and we will take it down the same day.

Spain

Ancient Trees in Zaragoza

Zaragoza's trees are unusually well documented and unusually undated. The city catalogued 57 singular trees in 2006 and measured every one, girth at the base, girth at chest height, height and crown, and recorded no ages at all. Four of them make a walk of under two kilometres along the buried course of the river Huerva, from a park that was a banker's private garden until 1959 to a university building of 1893. Two of the four stand in that one park.

The Almez of Parque Bruil

Mediterranean Hackberry (Celtis australis) · Centennial, no exact figure recorded, probably around 150 years · Tenerias, Casco Historico

In December 2025 this tree came third in Spain, with 1,799 votes, in a national poll for tree of the year. It was put forward not by the city but by the neighbourhood associations of San Agustin, Tenerias, La Madalena, Las Fuentes and San Miguel, which is a fair description of who actually uses the park. It is a hackberry, called almez or litonero here, fifteen metres tall and just over four metres round at chest height. What it grew up in is the interesting part. Juan Bruil, a Zaragoza banker who was briefly finance minister in 1854, bought the old Augustinian estate here in 1842 and had French gardeners lay out grounds around it. He stocked them with deer, pheasants, swans and monkeys, built an auditorium and commissioned a roller coaster, and let the public in on Sundays. The city did not own the land until 1959, and the park as it stands opened in 1965. The tree has had a harder recent decade than that history suggests: in 2015 residents asked the council to look at it because feet had compacted the soil over its roots, and in 2017 it was fenced. It now looks the better for it.

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The Holm Oak of Parque Bruil

Holm Oak (Quercus ilex) · Not recorded, probably 150 to 180 years · Tenerias, Casco Historico

This is the tree the neighbourhood meets at. In February 2012 a public gathering was called with the instruction to meet at the holm oak of Parque Bruil, and the reason was not affection but alarm: work remodelling the park had cut into its root plate and the tree had no protection plan of any kind. Holm oak is the native oak of this dry country, evergreen, small dark leaves furred pale underneath, and it was one of the species Juan Bruil's French gardeners put in when they laid out these grounds after 1842, alongside mulberries and plums and a great deal of imported novelty. The city measured it at two metres forty round at chest height and fourteen metres tall in 2004, which for a species that grows slowly on thin Aragonese soil is a considerable tree. What it has watched is a long argument about who the ground belongs to. It stood in a private garden that opened to the public one day a week, then in an estate the city spent years expropriating, and since 1965 in a public park that has been dug up and rebuilt around it more than once. It is still here.

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The London Plane of Calle Asalto

London Plane (Platanus x hispanica) · Not recorded · Tenerias, Casco Historico

The street is named after the thing that happened to it. In February 1809 French troops finally broke into Zaragoza through the medieval wall along this line, ending a second siege that had cost the city tens of thousands of lives and had been conducted, by the end, house by house. A stretch of that wall still stands opposite this tree. The plane itself is two metres eighty round at chest height and seventeen metres tall, growing out of a pavement beside a busy road, and the city's catalogue lists its single reason for protection as size. It carries large pruning stubs where structural branches were taken off, which is what happens to a big tree on a narrow street. London plane is a hybrid that has never been found growing wild, and it became the standard European street tree for one reason: it sheds its bark in plates, and with the bark goes the soot, which mattered enormously in a nineteenth century city and still matters here. Stand with your back to the wall the French came through, and the tree is the older-looking of the two things in front of you.

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The Yew of the Paraninfo

European Yew (Taxus baccata) · Not recorded · Centro

There is one yew in Zaragoza's register of singular trees, and this is it. The catalogue gives its reason for protection as the species being very uncommon in the city, which is a polite way of saying that a tree of cool wet northern churchyards has no business in a place that spends August above thirty five degrees. It is thirteen metres tall and one metre twenty round, and it is one of a pair, both male, so neither will ever carry the red berries that yews are known for. What they stand in front of is Ricardo Magdalena's Faculty of Medicine and Sciences, projected in 1886 and inaugurated on 18 October 1893, a building of brick and ceramic in a deliberately Aragonese key that now serves as the university's ceremonial hall, its general library and its natural sciences museum. Local tradition holds that these two yews are survivors of an older botanical garden on this ground, and that would make them older than everything around them. It is a good story and the evidence for it is thin, so treat it as a story. Yews are slow, dense and long lived, and this one is doing something its species is not built for.

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Frequently asked

What is the oldest tree in Zaragoza?: No source establishes it. The city measured its 57 singular trees in 2004 and 2005 and recorded no ages, so the honest answer is that the strongest candidates are the trees in Parque Bruil that survive from the gardens laid out there after 1842, at roughly 150 to 180 years.
Can you walk between them?: Yes. The four run a little under two kilometres from Parque Bruil in the Tenerias quarter west to the Paraninfo on Plaza Basilio Paraiso, roughly following the course of the Huerva, which runs buried under the Paseo de la Constitucion for the last stretch. Two of the four are in Parque Bruil itself, a couple of hundred metres apart.
Which is the one that was on television?: The hackberry in Parque Bruil, known locally as the almez or the litonero. Neighbourhood associations put it forward for Spain's Arbol del Ano 2026 and it came third nationally in the December 2025 vote with 1,799 votes, behind a lime in Avila and a red gum in Valencia.
Do they cost anything to see?: Parque Bruil and Calle Asalto are free and open. The Paraninfo is a working university building with a library and a natural sciences museum, so the yew in its grounds depends on the building being open.
How do you know these trees are still standing?: Honestly, for three of the four we do not know for certain. The city measured its singular trees in 2004 and 2005 and has not published an update, and trees in that catalogue have been lost since: a hackberry in this same park dried out and was felled, and a honey locust came down in 2014. The hackberry below was confirmed alive in December 2025 when it came third in Spain's tree of the year vote. The other three we place from the catalogue and from later mentions, and if you get there and one of them is gone, tell us and we will take it down the same day.
More on the oldest tree: What is the oldest tree in Zaragoza? The full answer, with map and directions.
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Walk all 4 trees about 2.4 km, 32 min on foot