Institut Ramon LLull

A friendship is forged in dire conditions: a campaign hospital during the Spanish Civil War. Benet, a Republican soldier, and George, a Scottish member of the Lincoln Brigade, can barely communicate in words yet the two young men devastated by violence form a strong bond with a drawing of a tree, inscribed “to my Scottish friend.” After Franco’s death, George seeks out his friend and finds that the roots of the tree had time. Inspired by the writings of a real soldier, Barbal focuses on Benet’s hard life in the bucolic Pallars region. His story is told through the eyes of several narrators: his family, his acquaintances, his vivid letters and his Scottish friend. When the two men meet again and juxtapose their strikingly divergent experiences four decades later, they come to the conclusion that key moments keep us tied to the past as well as to the future, and perhaps love is merely our desire to live despite it all.