Flag of the Dominican Republic

How to read it

Article 31 of the Dominican constitution (2015) describes the national flag: ultramarine blue and vermilion red in alternating quarters, placed so that the blue is at the top next to the pole, separated by a white cross whose arms are half as wide as a quarter is high, with the national arms in the centre. The merchant flag is the same without the arms. Law 210-19 of 2019, on the use of the flag, the arms and the anthem, sets three official sizes, the smallest 1.829 m by 1.218 m (6 ft by 4 ft) and the largest 2.5 m by 1.666 m (8 ft 2 in by 5 ft 6 in), all close to three units long for two high, and allows any other size in the same proportions. It makes 27 February, Independence Day, the day of the flag, and counts any colours other than vermilion red, ultramarine blue and the white of the cross as irreverence to it. El Día dates the first raising of the flag to 27 February 1844, and the present order of the quarters to the constituent assembly at San Cristóbal on 6 November 1844.

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The arms with the Bible

Article 32 of the constitution describes the arms, in the same colours as the flag. In the centre is a Bible open at the Gospel of St John, chapter 8, verse 32, with a cross above it, rising from a trophy of two lances and four national flags without arms, with a laurel branch on the left and a palm branch on the right. A blue ribbon above carries the motto “Dios, Patria y Libertad” (God, Country and Liberty), and a red ribbon below, its ends turned up, the words “República Dominicana”. The verse, in the translation Aleteia quotes, is “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free”; Acento gives the page as John 8:31–32.

The news sites Evangelical Focus and Aleteia both call the Dominican Republic’s the only national flag with a Bible on it. The arms took their present form in 1913: Acento counts about 21 official and unofficial changes between 1844 and 1913, when a decree of President Adolfo Alejandro Nouel made official the design of Casimiro Nemesio de Moya.

Why blue and red

The Dominican flag was born as a sign of the break with Haitian rule, El Día writes. The historian Juan Daniel Balcácer told a radio programme that Juan Pablo Duarte, the leader of the independence society La Trinitaria, took the flag then flying over the Spanish part of the island and set a full white cross in it. That flag was Haiti’s blue and red; Haiti’s flag still has the two colours in horizontal bands, with its own arms on a white panel.

Telling it from Panama’s flag

Panama’s flag is also in four quarters of blue, red and white, but has no cross and no arms: Panamá América describes the top quarter by the pole as white with a blue five-pointed star, the top quarter at the fly red, the bottom quarter by the pole blue and the bottom quarter at the fly white with a red star.