The flag of Portugal is a rectangular bicolour with a field divided into green on the hoist, and red on the fly. The lesser version of the national coat of arms is centered over the colour boundary at equal distance from the upper and lower edges. The current flag design represents a dramatic change in the evolution of the Portuguese standard, which had always been closely associated with the royal arms.
About Flag of Portugal in brief
The flag of Portugal is a rectangular bicolour with a field divided into green on the hoist, and red on the fly. The lesser version of the national coat of arms is centered over the colour boundary at equal distance from the upper and lower edges. On 30 June 1911, less than a year after the downfall of the constitutional monarchy, this design was officially adopted for the new national flag of the First Portuguese Republic. The current flag design represents a dramatic change in the evolution of the Portuguese standard, which had always been closely associated with the royal arms, blue and white. Since the country’s foundation, the national flag developed from the blue cross-on-white armorial square banner of King Afonso I to the liberal monarchy’s arms over a blue-and-white rectangle. A curious aspect of the official design is the absence of a segment of the Tropic of Capricorn, between the national shield and the ecliptic arc. In heraldic terminology, the shield’s blazon is described as Argent, each escutcheons in azure charged with five plates in saltire, triple-turreted Or, three in chief in chief, three on a bordure, and two on each side of the base of the flag. The flag’s length is equal to 1 1⁄2 times its width, which translates into an aspect ratio of 2: 3. The background is vertically divided into two colours: dark green on hoist side, and scarlet red on fly. The colours were popularly propagandised as representing the hope of the nation and the blood of those who died defending it, as a means to endow them with a more patriotic and dignified, therefore less political, sentiment.
The decree that legally created the flag with the new design was approved by the Constituent Assembly and published in government journal no. 141, on 19 June 1911. The colour division is made in a way that green spans 2⁄5 of the length and the remaining 3 ¼ are filled by red. The white inescutcheon is itself charged with five smaller blue shields arranged like a Greek cross. The red bordures are charged with seven yellow castles: three on each side, two on the base of the curved base, and two on the top of a building, showing a closed gate, on top of which stand three battlemented towers, which stand on the top of the gate. The shield is positioned in the way that its limits intersect the sphere: Its height and width are equal to 7⁄10 and 6 ¹/2 of the sphere’s diameter, respectively. The national shield, a white-rimmed curved bottom red shield charged with a white in Escutcheon, is positioned over the border between both colours. The great circles represent the e Cliptic, the equator, and the two meridians. The last three are positioned so that the intersections between each two arcs make a right angle; one meridian lies on the flag’s plane while the other is perpendicular to it.
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This page is based on the article Flag of Portugal published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
