The 'tree of Gernika', an oak that has symbolized the freedom of the people of the Basque Country since the Middle Ages, is to be replaced next month for the fourth time in history because the current specimen has been declared dead.
A pin oak tree, imported at a cost of €104,000 ($134,000) during an all-expenses-paid trip to Belgium by officials of a suburb of the Spanish capital, is "half-dead and rotting".
Authorities in the Spanish capital have decided to chop down trees that could be rotten after a second resident died when a branch fell on him this summer, one of 20 incidents that have left several people injured and caused damage to public property.
