Flag of Uruguay

How to read it

The national flag (Pabellón Nacional) was fixed by the laws of December 1828 and 12 July 1830. The 1828 law, as the Intendencia de Canelones quotes it, made the flag white with nine light blue horizontal stripes, alternating, leaving a white square in the upper corner by the staff in which the sun was to be placed. The 1830 law cut the stripes to four blue and five white and kept the meaning of the departments. A decree of 18 February 1952 specified the sun as a radiant circle with a face, ringed by 16 rays; before 1952 the face was drawn by tradition. Decree 557/976 of 24 August 1976 calls the Pabellón Nacional the highest-ranking national symbol and has it flown every day on state buildings, and on national days and when the Ministry of the Interior so orders, the flags of Artigas and of the Thirty-Three are flown with it.

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Why the blue stripes went from nine to four

The newspaper La Mañana says the members of the 1830 assembly changed the flag because the 1828 model, in light blue, looked very like the flag of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, today Argentina. The first flag was the initiative of Joaquín Suárez, the acting governor, and at midday on 1 January 1829 Suárez raised it in the centre of the square of the Villa de Guadalupe, at the request of the new governor, José Rondeau. Its nine light blue stripes were for the nine departments of 1828: Montevideo, Canelones, San José, Colonia, Soriano, Maldonado, Durazno, Cerro Largo and Paysandú, which then took in all the territory north of the Río Negro.

The Sun of May, shared with Argentina

Argentina’s flag carries the same Sun of May, a sign of the May Revolution of 1810, the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación notes. The two suns differ in their rays: Argentina’s has 32, alternating 16 straight and 16 flaming, and Uruguay’s has 16. Argentina’s sun sits in the centre of a white stripe between two light blue ones; Uruguay’s is in the top corner by the pole, over a field of nine stripes.

Uruguay’s and Greece’s flags

Greece’s flag also has nine horizontal stripes of blue and white with a square in the top corner by the pole. Its law makes five of the stripes blue and four white, with blue at the top and bottom, and puts an upright white cross in a blue square in the corner. Uruguay’s has white at the top and bottom, and a golden sun on white in the corner.