White with a crimson red cross and the coat of arms of the city laid over it in the centre: the flag of Almería, adopted in 1489 and legalised in 1997.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
CivilFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.YesIt carries the coat of arms on the cloth.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a rectangular field with a 3:5 ratio, white, with a plain crimson red cross five units wide, and the coat of arms of the city centred and laid over it.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
Every date in its story, at a glance.
The origin of the cross goes back to 1147
The Genoese banner —the Cross of St George— was adopted by the city after the reconquest…
The 1997 decree defines it with exact measurements
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of the city of Almería is a white field with a crimson red cross and the coat of arms of the city in the centre. The 1997 decree defines it with exact measurements, and those measurements have a reason: the cross is the banner of Genoa.
The flag was described by decree of the Consejería de Gobernación y Justicia of the Junta de Andalucía in 1997: ‘Flag 25 units long, from the flagpole to the fly, by 15 units wide, of flag-white, with a plain cross, 5 units wide, crimson red. Centred and laid over it the official coat of arms of the city, in a proportion of 5 units wide by 6 long, topped with a closed royal crown’.
The origin of the cross goes back to 1147. A Genoese army allied with Alfonso VII landed on the beach of Níjar, in Cape Gata, to take part in the conquest of Almería from the Almoravids. The Genoese banner —the Cross of St George— was adopted by the city after the reconquest by the Catholic Monarchs in 1489.
It has not changed since 1997, when the decree fixed its measurements. The flag is older as a symbol: the city had already used the cross since the late 15th century.
White
the colour of the field.
Crimson red cross
the banner of Genoa, adopted by the city after the conquest of 1489.
Coat of arms of the city
centred and laid over the crossing, of 5 by 6 units.
Closed royal crown
the timbre of the coat of arms.
The Cross of St George was the banner of the Republic of Genoa, which controlled Mediterranean maritime trade. Genoese merchants accompanied Alfonso VII in 1147 and the city adopted their cross after the conquest. It is an emblem imported by trade, not by dynastic right.
The decree gives no measurements in centimetres: it gives 25 by 15 units, with the cross at 5. It is blazon with arithmetic, a system that lets the flag be identical at any size and lets any school reproduce it.
The coat of arms of the city is centred and laid over the crossing of the cross. It covers the central part of the Cross of St George, so that only its four ends are visible.
Test what you have read about the flag of Almería.
Text based on the article “Bandera de Almería” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Miguillen, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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