Argentina welcomes Hollande with the tricolour backwards
A building in Buenos Aires was lit with the French flag the wrong way round during Hollande’s visit, and some posters drew the Argentine flag wrongly. What the two flags look like.
The French president François Hollande visited Argentina to set up new agreements between the two countries. As a tribute, the Argentine president Mauricio Macri ordered the Centro Cultural Néstor Kirchner to be lit up with the colours of the French flag. But it did not go well: the colours were in the wrong order and the technicians did not notice the mistake.
The building, lit with the colours in the wrong order.
France: vertical stripes, with the blue next to the pole.
But that was not the only mistake. Advertising posters were also prepared with the pun “Hola Hollande”. There the mistake was in the Argentine flag: the stripes were vertical, not horizontal, and the sun was missing.
The poster with the error.
Argentina: sky blue, white and sky blue, with the Sun of May.
What the two flags look like
- France: vertical tricolour: blue (next to the pole), white and red, in a 2:3 proportion. The blue-white-red order was set on 15 February 1794.
- Argentina: three horizontal stripes: sky blue, white and sky blue, with the Sun of May in the centre. The sun was added in 1818 and has 32 rays, alternately straight and wavy. The flag with the sun is the official one; the one without it is the ornamental flag.
A trick to avoid mistakes: if it is vertical, think of France; if it is horizontal with a sun, of Argentina.
