In the Axarquía village of El Borge there is an old Nokia mobile entombed in the pavement where it has laid for the last 18 years.

You can see this curiosity on the pavement along Calle Guillermo Pérez, next to the Carnecería El Lugá. It was in January 2008 during work to renovate the street when a worker who is now aged 67 had an old phone on him which had long since stopped working.

One of his companions suggested placing it there, which he did and there it remains to this day; a testament to the durability of the phone rather than its communication capacity. Salvador had bought it in the year 2000 when mobile coverage in the village was still touch and go.

And so, with a trowelful of cement it was laid to rest and then they all got back to work again. Nobody had thought that lying there for nearly two decades, taking a beating from the sun and rain… and pedestrians treading on it, it wouldn’t have desintegrated – but it hasn’t! They don’t make them like they used to, that’s for sure!

There was no solemn ceremony or calculated decision. Only a laugh, a quick gesture, and a trowel full of cement. “I was grouting and I cleaned off what I could, and we kept on working,” says Alarcón, now 39 and still linked to the construction industry. 

Nobody thought that phone, already useless then, would end up enduring nearly two decades under the sun, the rain, and the constant footsteps of the neighbours. “It’s just that those mobiles really were tough”he says with a half-smile. ‘On these, you used to play Snake,’ he adds, like someone remembering a childhood without touchscreens.

This isn’t the first time that the name of the village, El Borge has made the pages of the Seaside Gazette because some time back we ran an article on the controversy caused last November when the Town Hall, run by conservatives, had decided to change the name of Avenida Che Guevara to Avenida La Pasa referencing the village’s agricultural identity. 

So there you have it, street names might come and go, but the old Nokia mobile phone; one which predates the first smart phones, remains in place without causing a stir amongst politicians and residents.

(News: El Borge, Axarquia, Malaga, Andalucia)

Keywords: Nokia Phone Curiosity, Pavement, Embedded, Come Rain, Come Shine

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