Blue, gold and blue with the cross of the Order of Christ: Madeira made the separatists’ flag official in order to take it away from them.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
Civil and stateFIAV 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 three equal vertical stripes, each one a third of the length.
This is how Regional Decree 30/78/M, of 12 September 1978, describes 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.
After the Carnation Revolution of 1974
In 1976 Madeira obtained its autonomy
The regional parliament did not want to leave those colours, already very popular, in the hands…
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Madeira, the Portuguese autonomous region in the middle of the Atlantic, has three vertical stripes, blue, gold and blue, and a red cross in the centre. It looks like a calm island-and-beach flag, but its colours were born in a political struggle.
After the Carnation Revolution of 1974, which ended the dictatorship in Portugal, an armed independence group appeared in Madeira, FLAMA (Frente de Libertação do Arquipélago da Madeira). Its flag was blue and yellow.
In 1976 Madeira obtained its autonomy. The regional parliament did not want to leave those colours, already very popular, in the hands of the separatists: it approved them on 28 July 1978 as the official flag, but with a different symbol in the centre. The decree says almost as much: adopting blue and gold dismantled the separatist myth and turned the colours into a symbol of autonomy within Portugal.
It has not changed since it was approved in 1978.
The official flag is, in the end, a retouched version of that of the separatist movement.
No oficial
The same colours, with the five shields of the Portuguese flag in the centre. The regional government replaced the shields with the cross of the Order of Christ and made it official.
The meanings are set by the 1978 decree itself.
Blue
the sea that surrounds the islands. Also nobility and serenity.
Gold
the mild climate of the archipelago and wealth, strength and faith.
Cross of the Order of Christ
the two discoverers, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, were knights of Prince Henry the Navigator, master of this military order. The order was also the owner of the islands in their early years and settled them. The cross thus recalls the union with Portugal.
The flag of Barbados, of 1966, is also blue, gold and blue in equal vertical stripes. Only the tone of the blue and the central figure change: there, the head of a broken trident.
In 2003 the press published a photo of the regional president Alberto João Jardim wearing a FLAMA jersey and the motto ‘Madeira my homeland’. He was at the head of the region when the movement’s colours became official.
It is the cross that the Portuguese ships of the discoveries had painted on their sails, and Madeira, reached in 1419, was the first territory they found. Today it also appears on the flag of the Brazilian city of São Paulo and on the aircraft of the Portuguese Air Force.
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Text based on the article “Flag of Madeira” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Original: Brian Boru Vector: Nuno Tavares, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 1.0.
