Flag of Andorra

How to read it

Article 2 of Andorra’s constitution of 1993 says the state flag and the coat of arms are “the traditional ones”. The Law on the use of State signs, approved on 20 June 1996, explains that “traditional” is not to be read as “official”: the official form is to be fixed by a law, and until then the flag is the traditional one its annex describes. That is three similar vertical bands, blue next to the pole, yellow in the middle and red, with the coat of arms in the centre on the yellow. The annex allows the arms to be left off where the flag is shown very small, as on ribbons, as three bands alone. Store norske leksikon dates the flag to 1866 and says the yellow band is an eighth wider than the other two.

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Telling it from Romania’s, Moldova’s and Chad’s flags

Romania’s flag and Chad’s are blue, yellow and red in the same order, with no arms; Chad’s constitution makes the three bands equal. Moldova’s flag has its arms on the yellow too, but they are an eagle holding a cross in its beak, with a red and blue shield on its breast bearing a gold aurochs head, and the flag is twice as long as it is high, Store norske leksikon says. Andorra’s arms are a shield of four quarters in a bronze cartouche, and its yellow band is the widest of the three, which still shows on a small flag without the arms.

The four quarters of the arms

The shield joins the arms of the principality’s two lords and of two regions, Store norske leksikon says: the Bishop of Urgell’s in the first quarter, the Counts of Foix’s (the French co-prince from 1278) in the second, Catalonia’s in the third and Béarn’s in the fourth. The 1996 law lists the same four and describes the bishop’s as a gold mitre and crozier on red. The bronze cartouche around the shield carries the motto VIRTUS UNITA FORTIOR. The arms were adopted in 1278 by the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix, the country’s joint protectors, but had no official status until 1993, when they were approved by referendum and written into the constitution.

What the colours are said to mean

No law explains them. The Catalan news site NacióDigital gives the usual explanation: the yellow and red are the colours of the Catalan flag, which came to Andorra through the Bishop of Urgell, and the blue comes from the County of Foix, which was later joined to the French crown and stands for the French side of the co-principality.