Guayaquil Flag

The flag of Guayaquil, Ecuador's principal port city, consists of five horizontal stripes alternating light blue (celeste) and white, with three white five-pointed stars on the central blue stripe. It is one of the most historically significant flags of South America.

Far more than a municipal banner, it was the flag of the Free Province of Guayaquil, the sovereign state proclaimed on October 9, 1820, whose independence from Spain opened the liberation of the Ecuadorian coast. The city has flown it ever since, and it also serves as the flag of Guayas Province.

Its celeste and white palette, shared with several flags of the independence era, and the three stars of its central stripe make it instantly recognizable across Ecuador, above all every October 9th, the city's great civic holiday.

The light blue stripes are traditionally read as the sky, the Guayas River and the Pacific that made the city a great port, while the white stripes stand for the purity of the independence cause.

The three white stars on the central stripe are traditionally linked to the three cities of the Free Province of Guayaquil that joined the revolution of 1820: Guayaquil, Portoviejo and Machala, whose deputies signed the province's founding documents.

The flag was raised with the revolution of October 9, 1820, when Guayaquil declared its independence from Spain and constituted itself as the Free Province of Guayaquil under the leadership of the poet and statesman José Joaquín de Olmedo.

After the province was incorporated into Gran Colombia in 1822 and later into the Republic of Ecuador, the celeste-and-white flag remained the banner of the city and, in time, of Guayas Province. Two centuries later it is still flown throughout the city, an unbroken link to the October revolution.