page_title: Pi de les Tres Branques
section_title: Cultural recognition
hierarchical_section_title: Pi de les Tres Branques / History / Cultural recognition
caption_attribution_description: English: Reading of Verdaguer's poem at the Pi de les Tres Branques gathering, July 2014
context_page_description: Pi de les tres branques or Pino de las tres ramas in Spanish, "the three-branched pine" is a dead pine tree located in the countryside near the town of Berga in north-central Catalonia, Spain. It has long been regarded by some Catalan nationalists as representing the unity of the three "Catalan Countries" and is the site of regular political-cultural gatherings.
  The tree has been dead since 1915 and is in poor structural condition, due in part to politically-motivated vandalism, but there is a very similar living tree a short distance away known as Pino joven de las tres ramas, which is regarded as its successor. Both are protected as "monumental trees" by the Catalan Generalidad.
context_section_description: The tree had been traditionally celebrated as a symbol of the Holy Trinity, and it is still a venue for religious ceremonies. The first reference in extant records was in 1685, when a cartographer wrote that it was known as the Tree of the Trinity. It is also recorded that in 1746, the bishop of Solsona granted indulgences to those who prayed at the site.
  In 1876, the landowner of the site, in a letter to a local magazine denying that he was planning to sell the tree for timber, pointed out that it also represented the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.
  The Catalan language cultural revival of the 19th century saw a great increase in Catalan literature and culture. In 1875, playwright Francesc Pelagi Briz published a play Lo Pi de las Tres Brancas, which is set in Berga and at the tree, and contains a passage suggesting that the tree was already a Catalan national symbol. However, it was the 1888 poem "Lo Pi de les Tres Branques" by the poet Fr Jacint Verdaguer, published in his anthology Pàtria, which brought the tree to widespread attention, converting what was mainly a local religious symbol into a significant secular national symbol. In his poem, Jacint Verdaguer created the so-called 'legend' of the king-child King James I of Aragon who after being released from captivity in Narbonne (France) travelled with his retinue through Catalonia back to his seat at Monzón in Aragon, supposedly spending one of the nights sleeping under Pi de les Tres Branques, and it was there that he had an inspirational dream that he was destined to rule three kingdoms, represented by the three trunks of the tree, conquering the Balearic Islands and the Kingdom of Valencia from the Moors, which in fact he later achieved.
  The previous year, Verdaguer had stayed a few days in the nearby Queralt Sanctuary and visited the tree. "Lo Pi de les Tres Branques" recounts the story of James and the tree's symbolism of the Trinity and the unity of the Catalan Countries, and expressed the wish that it be adopted as Catalonia's national tree. The poem has remained the tree's principal literary connection, regularly recited at gatherings there.  It starts and ends with the often-quoted lines "Preguem que sia aqueix Pi / l'arbre sagrat de la pàtria." ("We pray that this Pine will be / the sacred tree of the fatherland.").
  It is accepted that in fact Verdaguer invented the story of James's sojourn for his poem, since there is no record of it before then, and that the poem's popularity created the legend.
  In 1901, when Verdaguer was presiding at the Floral Games, a traditional Catalan poetry contest, he coined the sobriquet "Guernica of Catalonia" for the tree, referring to the Tree of Guernica, an oak tree which symbolises Basque freedom. He also suggested the tree's trunks symbolised the three major awards of the contest: country, faith, and love.
  In May 1901 the landowner transferred ownership of the tree to the Catalanist Union (Unió Catalanista), a grouping of various nationalist organisations, at their meeting in Terrassa, though the transaction was never legally registered.
  This new popularity coincided with the slow decay of the tree, which eventually died in 1915.
  In 1987 the Catalan regional government listed the tree as a protected "monumental tree", one of the first three such trees (along with Pi Jove and Roure de Can Codorniu in Sant Sadurní d'Anoia). A silhouette of Pi de les Tres Branques (while it was alive) is now used by the government as a generic logo for monumental trees.
caption: The poem being recited at the 2014 annual gathering
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