Flag of Cuba
Cuba’s flag has five horizontal stripes, three blue and two white, and a red triangle at the pole holding a white five-pointed star: the “flag of the lone star” named in Cuba’s Constitution. As the Havana historian Eusebio Leal told it, the blue stripes are the island’s three military departments, the white the purity of the cause, the red triangle the blood that would be shed, and the three colours liberty, equality and fraternity.
Easily confused with
- Flag of Puerto RicoPuerto Rico’s flag has five horizontal stripes, three red and two white, and a blue equilateral triangle at the pole holding a white five-pointed star. Its makers in 1895 left no explanation; Puerto Rico’s government reads the three colours and the triangle’s three points, as on Cuba’s flag, as the republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.
- Flag of the PhilippinesThe Philippine flag has a blue stripe over a red one and a white equilateral triangle at the pole, holding a golden sun with eight rays and a golden five-pointed star in each corner. The flag law fixes the design without a meaning; the meaning usually given, as in the Daily Tribune and Store norske leksikon, is the sun’s eight rays for the first eight provinces to rise against Spanish rule and the three stars for Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.
How to read it
Article 2 of Cuba’s 2019 Constitution names the national symbols as the flag of the lone star (la bandera de la estrella solitaria), the anthem of Bayamo and the coat of arms of the royal palm, and leaves their characteristics, use and care to a law. The flag was drawn in New York in June 1849 by a group around Narciso López, a former Spanish army general born in Venezuela: his secretary, the writer Cirilo Villaverde, the poet Miguel Teurbe Tolón and Teurbe Tolón’s wife Emilia. Eusebio Leal, Historian of the City of Havana, said in 2010 that López sketched the design, Teurbe Tolón drew it out and Emilia made the first flag from silk ribbons and a piece of red cloth. It first flew in Cuba at Cárdenas on 19 May 1850, when López’s expedition landed there.
Also searched as: cuba flag, cuba flag meaning, cuban flag, cuban flag meaning, estrella solitaria, flag of cuba.
The triangle, the star and the stripes
Leal, following Villaverde’s written account, said López drew on two flags of his time, the flag of the United States and the flag of revolutionary France, and on the meaning of their three colours, red, blue and white: liberty, equality and fraternity. The five-pointed star sat in the centre of an equilateral triangle, and the number five gave the blue and white stripes; the blue ones stood for Cuba’s eastern, western and central regions under the Spanish military division, the white for the purity of the ideas, and the red of the triangle for the blood that would be shed. Cubadebate, in 2016, calls the equilateral triangle a symbol of Masonic fraternity and says the triangle was to be red, not blue, even against the rules of heraldry. Cubadebate’s 2025 description reads the white stripes as purity and justice and the lone star as the aspiration to liberty and sovereignty.
Telling it from Puerto Rico’s flag
Puerto Rico’s flag has the same layout with the colours swapped: a blue triangle and red stripes, with the same white star. Puerto Rico’s government quotes the minutes of the meeting of Puerto Rican independence supporters in New York, in December 1895, where it was presented: a flag of the same form as the Cuban one, with the colours inverted. The two are easy to confuse: in 2016 a Marvel Spider-Man comic set in Remedios, Cuba, drew the Cuban flag with its red and blue reversed, Cubadebate reported.
Read next
- Next in North and Central American flagsFlag of BelizeBelize’s flag is royal blue with a red stripe along the top and bottom and a white disc in the centre holding the coat of arms: two woodcutters either side of a shield of tools and a ship, a mahogany tree above and the motto “Sub umbra floreo” below. The Government of Belize calls the flag a symbol of the unity of the nation, and says the ring of 50 olive leaves around the arms stands for 1950, when Belize, then British Honduras, began its quest for independence.
- The same shape in African flagsFlag of the ComorosThe Comoros flag is four horizontal stripes, yellow, white, red and blue from the top, with a green triangle along the pole holding a white crescent and four white stars in a line between its tips. Norway’s Store norske leksikon explains the crescent as the symbol of Islam and the four stars as the four islands of the Comoros; Lex says the four stripes are said to stand for the islands too.
More north and Central American flags
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with lines, squares and rectangles, stars or triangles.
Sources
- Constitution of Cuba, 2019 (Constitute Project), Constitución de la República de Cuba, 2019, art. 2, Spanish text, Constitute Project, art. 2
- Regresa a Cuba uno de sus símbolos más preciosos (Eusebio Leal, Cubadebate), Eusebio Leal Spengler, Historian of the City of Havana, speech on receiving the Cárdenas flag of 1850, published by Cubadebate, 5 January 2010, Cubadebate, speech text
- ¿Qué sentido tiene la bandera de una nación? (Cubadebate), Cubadebate, opinion, 9 September 2016, Cubadebate, article text
- La imagen del día: La bandera de la estrella solitaria (Cubadebate), Cubadebate, 29 April 2025, Cubadebate, caption text
- Banderas y escudo (Gobierno de Puerto Rico), Gobierno de Puerto Rico, pr.gov, “Banderas y escudo”, Gobierno de Puerto Rico, La bandera de Puerto Rico
- Spiderman confunde la bandera de Cuba con la de Puerto Rico (Cubadebate), Cubadebate, 8 January 2016, Cubadebate, article text
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 13, 2026. How we research
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