Last modified: 2022-10-14 by klaus-michael schneider
Keywords: vila franca de xira(freguesia) | fleur-de-lis(yellow) | tower(white) |
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![[Vila Franca de Xira commune]](../images/p/pt-vfxvf.gif)
2:3 image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 18 May 2018
There is no proper coat of arms and the shield is shared with the namesake municipality. It conspicuously has yet to have adopted communal symbols and it uses, in an illegal fashion, the same coat of arms as the municipality, crowned with a mural crown of four visible towers, and with a scroll reading "FREGUESIA DE VILA FRANCA DE XIRA"
This usage evidences an interpretation of the the symbolism of local Portuguese heraldry in what concerns the hierarchical status (town vs. city) and the level of subdivisions (municipality vs. commune) when it comes to eponym seat settlements that is internally consistent although completely different and contrary to the law. Both the generic legal regime and the local heraldry law consider all communes of a given municipality as equals, and them all distinct from the encompassing municipality. Even when one of the communes is eponym, there is no such thing one commune as the seat of a municipality. This usage might not be uninque to this commune.
Sources: here and here
António Martins-Tuválkin, and Klaus-Michael Schneider, 18 May 2018
Flag and arms had been not approved offially.
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 18 May 2018
The commune of Vila Franca de Xira is one of the five that make up the eponymous municipality (they were eight before 2013), one that includes the seat city and the vast uninhabited tidal island and estuarine marshland areas in the southeast of the municipal territory (even those much closer to other settlements / commune seats - a veritable metropolis in this regard).
Vila Franca de Xira Commune is one of the six communes of the Vila Franca de Xira municipality; it had 18 197 inhabitants in 2011 and covers 212.9 km². Vila Franca de Xira Commune - though the biggest commune by area- is not the biggest by inhabitants and has no offiicial proper symbols.
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 18 May 2018
back to Vila Franca de Xira Communes click here