Skip to content

Wiki Banderas
Open menu

Flag of Cádiz

Crimson red with Hercules in the centre: the flag of Cádiz carries the coat of arms of the hero who, according to legend, founded the city.

Flag of Cádiz
Coat of arms
Learn to read it Test yourself

The flag, in figures

Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.

Proportions
2:33 wide for every 2 high. 989 flags in the catalogue share it.
Properties
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
Use
CivilFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.
Adopted
200912 January 2009 · 17 years ago
Colours
  • crimson red
Reference shades: the official one may vary slightly.
Coat of arms
YesIt carries the coat of arms on the cloth.
Origin
Coat of arms of Cádiz
1234

Take a closer look

  1. The crimson cloth

  2. 1

    The ducal crown

  3. 2

    The columns

  4. 3

    The municipal coat of arms

  5. 4

    The border with the inscription

How it is described

The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.

Vexillological description

It is a rectangular field of a single colour, crimson red, with the coat of arms of the city in the centre. The rule does not fix the ratio; the usual one of 2:3 is used.

Field (the cloth)
crimson red, a dark red tending to garnet, with no stripes or borders.
Coat of arms
in the centre. It shows Hercules dressed in a lion’s skin, holding two lions by their manes, between two columns with the motto ‘Non plus ultra’.
Border
around the coat of arms, the inscription ‘Hercules Fundator Gadium Dominatorque’, and above it a ducal crown.

What it carries

Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.

Its history in dates

Every date in its story, at a glance.

  1. 1871

    The columns were removed in 1871 and later came back

  2. 2008

    In 2008 the city council asked for it to be entered in the register of symbols of Andalusia…

The full story

How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.

The flag of the city of Cádiz is crimson red, a dark red, with the coat of arms in the centre. On the coat of arms is Hercules, the Greek hero who, according to legend, founded the city.

How it came about

Cádiz has used this flag out of tradition for a long time. It is not known when it began. In 2008 the city council asked for it to be entered in the register of symbols of Andalusia together with the coat of arms, and the Junta approved it on 12 January 2009.

How it has changed

The flag has not changed; the coat of arms has. The columns were removed in 1871 and later came back.

What it means

The crimson has no official meaning. The whole message is in the coat of arms:

  • Hercules

    the legendary founder of the city. In fact Cádiz was a Phoenician colony, and its patron god was Melqart, whom the Romans identified with Hercules.

  • Columns

    the mountains that, according to the myth, Hercules parted to open the Strait of Gibraltar.

  • ‘Non plus ultra’

    ‘nothing further’. It warned that there the known world ended.

Fun facts

  1. No legend speaks of the two lions

    No classical myth tells that Hercules held two lions. Some experts believe the image got mixed up with that of the prophet Daniel in the lions’ den.

  2. The father of the coat of arms of Andalusia

    Blas Infante drew inspiration from the coat of arms of Cádiz to create that of Andalusia, with Hercules between two columns. The Assembly of Ronda accepted it in 1918.

  3. From "nothing further" to "further still"

    The motto on the columns of Cádiz is the old ‘Non plus ultra’. Probably after Columbus’s voyage of 1492, the motto was changed to ‘Plus ultra’, the one the columns of the Spanish coat of arms carry today.

Location

Buy the flag

Buy the flag on AmazonAffiliate link: if you buy, Wiki Banderas receives a small commission.

Municipality facts

How many people live there, how big it is and what borders it.

Population (2025)
109,950
Area
12.1 km²
pop./km²
9,087
Elevation
11 m

How much have you learnt?

Test what you have read about the flag of Cádiz.

  1. 1. Which one is the flag of Cádiz?

  2. 2. Which of these elements appears on the flag?

  3. 3. What are the proportions (height:width) of the flag?

  4. 4. In which year was the current flag adopted?

Sources

Text based on the article “BOJA núm. 15, de 23 de enero de 2009, pág. 66” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.

Sources consulted:

More flags

Accessibility preferences

Accessibility statement

Quick profiles

Text and reading

Text size
Default
Line height
Default
Letter spacing
Default
Word spacing
Default

Colour

Motion and orientation

Cursor