Flag of Portugal

How to read it

Article 11 of Portugal’s constitution says the national flag is the one adopted by the Republic that the revolution of 5 October 1910 founded, and calls it the symbol of the Republic’s sovereignty and of Portugal’s independence, unity and integrity. The Provisional Government approved the design on 29 November 1910, and the Constituent National Assembly confirmed it at its first sitting, by a decree of 19 June 1911. The decree divides the flag vertically into two colours, dark green and scarlet, the green next to the pole, with the shield of the national arms, edged in white, over the join, set on the Manueline armillary sphere in yellow outlined in black. It left the measurements to the flag commission’s report, published in the government gazette on 30 June 1911. Decree-Law 150/87 of 30 March 1987 sets how the flag is flown: on Sundays, public holidays and days of official ceremonies, from 9 a.m. until sunset, at half-mast in national mourning, and in the place of honour when it flies with other flags.

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Why green and red, and not blue and white

From 1830 to 1910 the kingdom’s flag was blue by the pole and white, with the crowned royal arms on the join, Store norske leksikon says. The flag commission, among them the painter Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, the writer Abel Botelho and the journalist João Chagas, left the blue out because it was tied to the cult of Our Lady of the Conception: “for us, historically and morally, blue is a condemned colour,” its report of 29 October 1910 said. The report called red “combative, hot, virile”, a colour that “recalls blood and spurs to victory”, and green the colour of hope, of progress in Auguste Comte’s philosophy and above all of the revolution of 5 October.

Green and red had been the republicans’ colours since the rising of 31 January 1891, the Presidency of the Republic says. In October 1910 the revolutionaries flew them with the red by the pole and the larger part green; the commission turned the colours round. The new flag set off a public quarrel between the supporters of blue and white and of green and red, and the Provisional Government refused their call for a referendum. It made 1 December the Day of the Flag Festival.

What the castles and the five shields stand for

The commission’s report said only that the arms belonged to the founding of the nation and the winning of independence, so their meaning is tradition, the Museum of the Presidency says. The five small blue shields (quinas), set as a cross, are tied to the legend of Ourique, first written down in the 15th century: King Afonso Henriques is said to have put them in his arms for five Moorish kings killed at the battle of Ourique, after a vision of Christ on the cross. The white dots in each, at first thirty and later five, were read as the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas, and later as the five wounds of Christ. The seven castles on the red border are traditionally said to mark the Algarve joining the kingdom, since castles were in the Algarve’s arms; King João II is credited with fixing their number. The armillary sphere behind the shield is an astronomical instrument that seafarers such as Prince Henry the Navigator used, Store norske leksikon says.

The seven castles and the conquest story

A Facebook post of 1 December 2023 said the seven castles were fortified towns Afonso Henriques took from the Moors. The heraldry historian Miguel Metelo de Seixas, of the Institute of Medieval Studies at NOVA University Lisbon, told the newspaper Observador in January 2024 that this is false. In his account the border began as a heraldic difference showing that Prince Afonso, later King Afonso III, was not the head of the royal line. Because Afonso III completed the conquest of the Algarve, the border of castles came to be linked with the Algarve, first in writing by the chronicler Rui de Pina in the 15th century. The later idea that the castles were particular Algarve strongholds he called “pure fantasy”.