Flag of Borriana

The flag of Borriana is the senyera —four red stripes on yellow —with a blue stripe by the mast and three golden crowns on top. That blue stripe and those three crowns are the reason Borriana has a flag of its own: they arrived by privilege of a king, in 1349, and have not been lost since.

How it came about

Borriana is a royal town of the Plana Baixa, with the right to vote in les Corts. In 1349, in the middle of the War of the Union, King Pere the Ceremonious granted permission to add to the senyera a blue stripe with three crowns. The document is kept in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon.

The coat of arms of the municipality, which carries only the three crowns on a blue field, was approved on 6 June 1991 and published in DOGV number 1,587. The flag was restored afterwards: by resolution of 24 January 2002, published in DOGV number 4,204, of 6 March, with this official description: “Flag with a ratio of 2:3. On a yellow ground four red bars. Thirded at the hoist in blue with three crowns”.

How it has changed

It has changed little and with a history of surprises. The seals of the village changed over time: the pales of Aragon in 1379, a circle of walls and six towers in 1425, the pales again in 1509. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the central crown sometimes carried the senyera on top. In the twentieth century, the municipal honours regulation of 1972 added a flag with a white stripe and a fleur-de-lis on the central crown, against the historical evidence itself.

What it means

• Four red stripes on yellow

  the senyera, the field of the Crown of Aragon.

• Blue stripe

  it was granted by the king in 1349, and it is what distinguishes this flag from the common Valencian one.

• Three golden crowns

  the three royal crowns of the privilege, on a blue field as in the coat of arms.

Fun facts

1. Three crowns a king granted in 1349

   The blue stripe with three crowns is not an ornament: it is a permission. In 1349, in the middle of the War of the Union, King Pere the Ceremonious granted Borriana the right to add it to the senyera. The privilege is kept in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon.

2. The blue that is almost not a colour

   The original document does not say blue: it says a colore livido, a pale and washed-out tone. On the flag of Majorca it was read as purple and in Borriana as blue. Joan Fuster devoted a whole article to the subject, “El blau en la senyera” (1977).

3. Only two Valencian flags with a blue stripe

   Borriana shares with the flag of Valencia the use of the four bars with a blue stripe: they are the only two in the Valencian Country that do it. Across the rest of the Comunitat the blue stripe appears only on the flag of the Generalitat.

4. The rule says bars and should say stripes

   The 2002 resolution describes the field as “four red bars”. In vexillology, bars are vertical; horizontal ones are stripes or faixes. It is a vocabulary error in the official text, and the same Wikipedia article that quotes the rule marks it with a “sic”.

5. A fleur-de-lis that was not the village's

   The municipal honours regulation of 1972 included a flag with a white stripe and a fleur-de-lis added to the central crown. Neither the historical documents nor the coats of arms of the city back it: it was passed against the opinion of the town council itself.