Stubborn Life

"The palm tree"

7 December 2014

In the heart of the Poblenou cemetery, among tombs and mausoleums, stands an old palm tree with dry, yellowing fronds. Deceased among the deceased, the palm rises petrified, sinking its roots into the remains of Ignacio and Casimiro.

This palm is the life that, feeding on death, grew tall, cracking gravestones and breaking timber until it became death again, a monument among monuments.

And yet the circle of life and death was not closed, and perhaps it was no longer a circle but a spiral: it was astonishing to discover that, in the pale and deciduous foliage, a fig tree with green and glossy leaves grew twisted and proud.

I was contemplating a powerful and hopeful monument to life.

1 November 2015

Evidently the cemetery gardeners did not think the same, since there is no longer any trace of the palm tree.

Well, nothing.

Perhaps they saw it as a defiant act of rebellion, for wherever a public gardener of Barcelona passes, little tends to be left alive that isn’t strictly laid down by the council’s protocols. On that note, it’s worth reading the document written by the CGT in February 2009.