Four red bars on a yellow ground: the Catalan senyera is the old emblem of the counts of Barcelona and kings of Aragon, with no coat of arms or ornaments.
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 and nine horizontal stripes of the same width, five yellow and four red, alternating. It carries no coat of arms or any other figure.
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 oldest surviving image is on a wax seal of 1150 of the count Ramón Berenguer IV
It was first made official in 1933, with the Interior Statute of Catalonia
After the Franco dictatorship, the Statute of Autonomy of 1979 recovered it
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Catalonia, called the senyera, has nine horizontal stripes: five yellow and four red. It carries no coat of arms or any other drawing. It is one of the oldest flags in Europe still in use, and from it also come those of Aragon, the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands.
In the Middle Ages the red and yellow bars were the family emblem of the counts of Barcelona, who from the twelfth century were also kings of Aragon. The oldest surviving image is on a wax seal of 1150 of the count Ramón Berenguer IV, where a knight appears with the barred coat of arms.
At first only the king could use the emblem, as a sign of his power. Over time it passed to nobles, cities and guilds, and ended up identifying the territories he ruled. From the nineteenth century, with the revival of Catalan culture, it became the great symbol of Catalonia.
It was first made official in 1933, with the Interior Statute of Catalonia. After the Franco dictatorship, the Statute of Autonomy of 1979 recovered it, and that of 2006 kept it.
The design of four red bars on yellow has been the same for centuries. The laws have only refined its measurements and the exact shade of the colours.
The law gives no meaning to the colours. Its value is historical:
Yellow and red
the colours of the emblem of the House of Barcelona and of the kings of the Crown of Aragon.
Four bars
the number that was fixed over time; in the Middle Ages the number of bars varied.
According to a legend, the Frankish emperor passed four fingers stained with the blood of Count Wifredo the Old over his golden shield. It is an invented story: the historian Pere Antoni Beuter wrote it in the sixteenth century, seven centuries later.
The wax seal of Ramón Berenguer IV, of 1150, is the oldest known representation of the bars.
The estelada, with a blue triangle and a white star, was designed around 1918 by Vicenç Albert Ballester, inspired by the flags of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Independence supporters use it, but the official flag is only the senyera.
Test what you have read about the flag of Catalonia.
Text based on the article “Bandera de Cataluña” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Flag image: Motoroil, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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