Flag of Albacete

The flag of Albacete is a crimson field —an intense red— with the coat of arms of the city in the centre. The coat of arms has a white field and carries three stone towers with a black bat flying above them.

How it came about

Albacete is a young city: it was granted the title of town in 1375. Its flag, on the other hand, is very modern. An order of the Regional Ministry of Public Administrations of 9 March 1992 fixed the crimson field with the coat of arms in the centre, and on 30 April the plenary adopted it. The coat of arms was almost new: it had been approved on 28 February 1986 and was published in the Diario Oficial de Castilla-La Mancha on 13 January 1987, with decree 137/86.

The drawing, on the other hand, is much older. In 1538 the town’s documents already stamped a tower, and the seals kept changing: in 1568 they were ordered with ‘a castle and an eagle’, and in 1569 with three towers in a triangle topped by an eagle with spread wings. The bat did not arrive until the 20th century.

How it has changed

It has not changed: it is the same flag as in 1992.

What it means

• Crimson

  the colour of the field, a single one, with no stripes or divisions.

• Silver field

  the white background of the coat of arms.

• Three stone towers

  one in the centre and two below. The official description calls them of stone, with the joints in black and the windows in blue.

• Bat

  black, with spread wings, above the towers, in the upper part of the coat of arms.

• Marquess’s crown

  of gold, with stones and pearls, crowning the coat of arms.

Fun facts

1. Before the bat there was an eagle

   The city’s seals were ordered in 1568 with ‘a castle and an eagle’, and in 1569 with ‘three towers in a triangle surmounted by an eagle with spread wings’. The bat only took hold in the 20th century, and its origin still has no documented explanation.

2. A typo inside the official text

   The agreement that approved the coat of arms in 1986 says ‘three towers well ordered and crenellated’, when the correct wording would be ‘badly ordered’: one on top of the other two and not in a row. It is an official coat of arms with a typo in its own description.

3. The towers are of stone, not red

   The coat of arms is described as three towers ‘of stone, masoned in sable, with windows in azure’. The black is not a detail: it is the joints between the blocks, and the blue is the windows opened in each tower.

4. The same bird in the lordship of Villena

   According to the historian Aurelio Pretel, the eagle that later became a bat would come from winged hands holding swords, the emblem of the Manuel de Villena family, which appears in the arms of other towns of the same lordship: Villena, Sax, Hellín, Almansa or Tobarra. It is a theory, and no document confirms it.

5. The town council’s coat of arms is not the approved one

   More than one coat of arms of Albacete exists. The one the Ayuntamiento uses in its acts, and the one on this flag, does not correspond exactly to the one approved and officially published after the decree of 1986.

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