Flag of Spain

How to read it

Article 4 of the Spanish Constitution defines the flag: three horizontal stripes, red, yellow and red, the yellow twice the width of each red one. Law 39/1981 of 28 October on the use of the flag repeats this and allows the coat of arms on the yellow stripe; the arms must appear on the flags of the constitutional bodies, of the central, regional, provincial and municipal administrations, of the armed forces and security forces, and of Spain’s embassies and consulates. The arms are described by Law 33/1981 of 5 October and drawn in the official model published by Royal Decree 2964/1981 of 18 December. That decree makes the arms two fifths of the flag’s height, centred on the yellow, with their axis half the flag’s height from the pole when the flag is in its normal proportion, one and a half times as long as it is high.

Also searched as: flag of spain, spain flag, spain flag meaning, spanish flag, spanish flag meaning.

The arms, piece by piece

Law 33/1981 describes a shield quartered, with a point at its base. The first quarter has a gold castle with blue openings and black masonry lines on red, for Castile. The second has a purple lion rampant, crowned in gold, on silver, for León. The third has four red vertical bars (pales) on gold, for Aragon. The fourth has a gold chain set as a cross, a saltire and a border, with an emerald at its centre, on red, for Navarre. In the point, on silver, is a pomegranate split open to show red, with two green leaves, for Granada. Navarre’s arms were an eagle until the mid-14th century, when the chains replaced it; in the story the museum of Spain’s Air and Space Force tells, they recall the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, where Sancho VII of Navarre cut the chains protecting the Almohad caliph, Muhammad al-Nasir, and took the emerald from his turban.

In the middle sits a small blue shield with three gold fleurs-de-lis and a plain red border, the arms of the reigning dynasty, the house of Bourbon. A closed royal crown stands on top. At each side is a silver column with gold base and capital on waves of blue and silver: the column on the shield’s right, the viewer’s left, is topped by an imperial crown and wound with a red ribbon reading PLUS, the other by a royal crown with ULTRA.

The columns and the motto Plus Ultra

The columns are the Pillars of Hercules, which in the Greek myth stood either side of the Strait of Gibraltar to mark the end of the world, the same museum explains. Once Columbus had found land beyond them, the old saying “Non plus ultra” (“nothing further”) became “Plus ultra” (“further still”), and Charles I put the motto on the columns. They dropped out under Philip II and came back with the Bourbon kings in the 18th century. In the museum’s account the imperial crown stands for the empire of Charles I and the royal crown for Spain’s royal house.

Where the red and yellow came from

The museum traces the colours to a competition Charles III held for a new navy flag, because the white flag Spanish ships had flown was easily confused with other fleets’ at a distance. Among the reasons given for the colours, it says, are yellow for the gold of the Americas and red for the blood Spaniards shed for their country; the museum offers these as some of the reasons, not as an official meaning.