How could they?

Strolling along one of the roads out of town, they come upon a shocking sight.

Doris is shocked, anyway. Her husband Bill isn't quite so affected because it's a warm, sunny morning and he's focused on reaching the cafe-bar he knows is just a little further along the road.

'This is terrible,' wails Doris, reaching into her rucksack for her mobile phone. She takes a photo of the devastation, not for any particular reason, just because she feels that something like this needs recording. An entire row of trees has gone, some twenty or more. She remembers them very clearly from their last walk this way, mature trees providing welcome shade along the pavement.

The sawn stumps still remain, ragged circles of pale wood waiting to be dragged out of the earth by the yellow digger parked further along the road.

Nearer the cafe a shorter row of the same trees is still standing. Doris takes more photos while Bill waits not very patiently in the dappled shadows cast by the last tree, just next to the cafe.

'They're so beautiful,' Doris murmurs, more to herself than to Bill. 'Flame trees.' The name is entirely appropriate because throughout the summer these wonders of nature glow in the sun with brilliant red blossom as though every twig is alight. Doris zooms her mobile phone's camera to capture a close-up of the petals.

Her husband is now standing in the open entrance to the cafe, fanning his face with a sun hat. Doris joins him and they choose a table just inside because it's too hot to sit at the outdoor tables. As Bill downs half a glass of cold beer in one long swallow Doris is still muttering in disbelief: 'How could they?'

She holds up the phone to show Bill her photo of the blossom. He nods. 'Lovely. Good photo.'

Doris needs more than this. As the cafe's proprietor, a plump woman in her fifties, bustles past their table with a broom Doris waves the phone towards her and points at the screen. 'Trees,' she tells the proprietor. 'Beautiful. Gone!' She mimes a tree falling over, with a puzzled expression that means why? in any language.

'Sí, sí, sí,' responds the woman ambiguously, moving on as though not wishing to get involved. A moment later she returns. 'Muy hermosa,' very beautiful, she agrees, 'pero mira!' Look! She points to the cafe floor. It's covered in bright red petals sprinkled like confetti. She sweeps some of them into a little pile then waits for a moment until a gust of wind from the entrance picks them up and spreads them across the floor again. Hands on hips she says 'Ves?' -You see? - then quite a lot more, probably along the general line that these damned trees cause her more work than all the customers put together. Fired up, she pursues the confetti with renewed vigour, corralling it into a corner where she can scoop it into a dustpan.

A minute later she returns, waves her broom accusingly towards the nearest flame tree then points to the floor, saying 'up!' in English. She mimes someone tripping and nearly falling.

'The trees lift the paving,' Bill interprets. 'The roots. She's right, you can see it in the ones still standing. Dangerous.'

The proprietor nods at him, sensing an ally.

'What are they called?' Doris asks the woman, who shakes her head, not understanding. 'Name?' Doris tries. 'Um - nombre?', indicating the tree on her phone.

'Los arboles? Flamboyán,' says the proprietor. 'Flam-boy-án,' she repeats carefully - this is a name to remember! 'Flamboyanes,' she adds helpfully, then sweeps her hand through the air and mimes a row of trees falling over one after the other. Chuckling, she swipes her hands together - job done! - and marches off with her broom and dustpan.

Oh, well. Doris has lost her flame trees but - to stand back objectively for a moment - she and Bill have just encountered one of the great conflicts of urban living, the battle between nature and practicality. We need both.

Fortunately there are still many flame trees in the park and in other places where they won't raise the paving on a busy pedestrian route. The ones being felled here will be replaced by better-behaved species with which we can live in harmony and less risk of broken bones.

-------------- NOTES --------------

This seems to be a problem largely unacknowledged but global in its reach. A few years ago on the other side of the Atlantic, in Colón on the Argentine bank of the River Uruguay, we passed a shopkeeper sweeping petals from the pavement beneath a tall, spreading tree covered in exquisitely beautiful blue blossom. We asked what its name was in Spanish and she said it was jacarandá (almost the same as in English) and she hated it. 'First the blossom, then the seeds, then the leaves. For me, I'd cut it down tomorrow.' It's not hard to sympathise, although maybe she'd miss it when it had gone.

Here in San Sebastián, Doris's outrage was shared by many others but the town's mayor explained in an interview with the local press that the council had to spend large sums of money every couple of years to relay the paving. The flamboyanes would be replaced by native species which would provide shade just as effectively but without the risk, such as acebuche and almácigo.

I had no idea what either of those was, but I can now reveal that acebuche is wild olive. It has a pleasantly gnarled trunk and broad, spreading branches. Almácigo is a wild relative of the pistachio, equally attractive and shady. Both are native to the Canary Islands and both can live for a thousand years or more, by which time they will be fifteen metres high and with trunks a metre wide, so there won't be much left of the pavement, but by then it will probably be under the sea anyway.