Half red with a golden castle and half white: the flag of Castilla-La Mancha recalls the kingdom of Castile and the military orders.
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 2:3 ratio divided into two equal vertical halves: the one by the flagpole (the pole it is hoisted on) is red and bears a golden castle; the other is white.
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.
His proposal had been submitted in 1977
When the provisional government was created in 1978
On 11 January 1980, at a meeting in Albacete, seven projects were studied
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Castilla-La Mancha is split into two vertical halves. The one by the mast is crimson red and bears a golden castle; the other is completely white. It is one of the youngest and simplest of Spain’s autonomous flags.
Castilla-La Mancha did not exist as a region before the Transition. When the provisional government was created in 1978, it needed symbols of its own, and the political parties commissioned proposals.
On 11 January 1980, at a meeting in Albacete, seven projects were studied. The winner was that of Ramón José Maldonado y Cocat, an expert in heraldry, the study of coats of arms, and official chronicler of Almagro. His proposal had been submitted in 1977. The flag was published in the official bulletin in October 1980, and the Statute of Autonomy of 1982 confirmed it.
The design has not changed since 1980. The only thing that has varied in practice is the ratio and the shade of the red.
According to its author, each half represents a part of the history of the region:
Crimson red
the colour of the standard of Castile, the old kingdom to which the territory belonged.
Golden castle
also Castile. It is the same three-towered castle that appears on the coat of arms of Spain.
White
the military orders of Calatrava, Santiago and San Juan, groups of religious knights that conquered and governed much of La Mancha in the Middle Ages.
The official text says the flag is made up of two equal squares, which would make it twice as long as it is high. In practice almost all of them are made with the usual ratio of 2 by 3.
What is normal is for a flag to be inspired by a coat of arms. Here it went the other way: the coat of arms of Castilla-La Mancha was designed from the flag.
Because the crimson tone was not well defined, official flags in very different colours have been seen, from a dark pink to an intense red.
Test what you have read about the flag of Castilla-La Mancha.
Text based on the article “Bandera de Castilla-La Mancha” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Xinese-v, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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