Granada Flag

The flag of the Spanish city of Granada is divided into two equal vertical stripes, crimson at the hoist and green at the fly, with the arms of the city superimposed at the centre.

The official text is unusually precise about the technique. It calls for the arms en bordado sobrepuesto, embroidered and laid over the cloth rather than printed into it, and it names the red as carmesí, crimson, not plain red.

The arms were granted by the Catholic Monarchs shortly after they took the city in 1492, and for centuries they held two quarters: the monarchs themselves, and the fruit of the Punica granatum, the pomegranate. The fruit is a pun that has stood for the city ever since, because in Spanish its name and the name of the city are the same word.

A third quarter arrived in 1843, when Isabella II added the Torre de la Vela of the Alhambra flying a national flag, together with the new titles carried on the gold ribbon around the shield. It was a reward: the people of Granada had risen in her favour against the regent.

Granada carried its arms for almost five centuries before the cloth was settled. The flag in use today was approved by the city council in plenary session on 6 September 1983.

Formal registration came much later. By a resolution of 10 February 2009 the arms and flag were entered in the Registro Andaluz de Entidades Locales, and the description was published in the Boletín Oficial de la Junta de Andalucía of 23 February 2009. That published text is what fixes the crimson shade, the equal stripes and the embroidered arms.

The two dates are easy to confuse. 1983 is when Granada adopted the flag, 2009 is when Andalusia wrote it into the register.