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Erroneous Flags and Ensigns (Spain)

Erroneous Depictions of Columbus' Flag
Unidentified flag reported in "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 1771
Erroneous Depiction of the Spanish Flag With:
Dodgy Banner of Arms

See also:

Spanish Flag With Centred Coat-of-Arms

image by Antonio Gutiérrez, date unknown

"Banderas y Escudos del Mundo" [a8m86] contains some historical and subnational flags of Central and South America. Not very reliable, big mistakes (for instance, Spanish flag with centred coat-of-arms).

Santiago Dotor, 13 Apr 2000 and 23 Sep 2003

I guess that this incorrect variant is used also elsewhere, either from this source, from this source's source, or out of sheer coincidence.

António Martins-Tuválkin, 24 May 2003

Spanish Flag With Orangeish Yellow

image by Antonio Gutiérrez and António Martins-Tuválkin, 07 Sep 2007

One of the flags on this stamp, from the Brazil page at Richard Mallett’s Flags on Stamps.info website, is unusually misdepicted: not only is the emblem centered (a common mistake), but the shade of yellow is also much darker than it should be, almost orange, a shade indeed used nowhere else on the stamp.

In short: the yellow area of the Spanish flag should not be "spanish yellow." ;-)

António Martins, 07 Sep 2007

Spanish Flag With Two-Tone Yellow

image by Antonio Gutiérrez and Ivan Sache, 18 Oct 2003

The "Promenade des Ports du Monde" in Le Havre is the sidewalk of the Boulevard Georges-Clemenceau, between the entrance of the commerce port and the beach and along the marina. The Promenade is marked out with 25 national flags hoisted on tall poles. Each pole bears a rectangular shield on which the names of the country and port(s) are written. The ports are those which have commercial relationships with the port of Le Havre, including (as written on the shield) "Espagne – Bilbao, Vigo, Algeciras." The yellow field is darker than the square part around the coat of arms.

Ivan Sache, 18 Oct 2003

Spanish Flag With Brown/Green In Lieu Of Yellow/Red

image by Antonio Gutiérrez and António Martins-Tuválkin, 29 Feb 2004

I saw recently a very weird variant of the Spanish national flag: green-brown-green!...

This was the Park of Nations (Parque das Nações) in Lisbon, Portugal, on the grounds of Expo98. They have a row of flags there, of all countries and entities that participated in the exhibitions, with a small presentation of the flagged entity attached to each pole. It bears assorted trivia and an image of the flag. Minor differences are not uncommon, such as, f.i., plain yellow for the bottom stripe of Armenia on the plaque below but dark orange hoisted above etc., but Spain with medium green for red and woody brown for yellow is a bit unheard of.

It is not sun-bleaching (other colors on the same plaque are normal and no other plaque shown the same kind of changes) and I'm sure I have never saw this before. FWIW, the CoA appeared to have the normal colors.

António Martins-Tuválkin, 29 Feb 2004

Sounds like someone accidentally mixed up a photographic negative with a slide when making the flag!

James Dignan, 29 Feb 2004

James' suggestion that this could be a photo negative for the background doesn't seem to be so: a plain triband of 1R + 2Y + 1R inverted to its negative color values is rather something like , or 1B – + 2B + 1B – , with medium blue for yellow and light blue for red.

António Martins-Tuválkin, 04 Jun 2009

Spanish Flag With Black Star

image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 18 Jul 1999

While hitchhiking from Sweden to Portugal last August, I noticed an erroneous Spanish flag depiction, a regular flag with a large five-pointed star in the middle, instead of the coat-of-arms. I guess someone confused the former coat-of-arms's large black eagle for this star. It was depicted in a telephone booth's multilanguage instructions panel in a gas station on the highway Orange-Nîmes [France], quite near the Spanish border. The flags were black and white newspaper-style, with ink dots on a metallic background, and so the colors of my GIF are assumed, by comparison with the other, correct, flags.

António Martins, 18 Jul 1999

Dodgy Banner of Arms

image by Eugene Ipavec, 03 Jun 2009

I bought a flag yesterday at a place called "Cutlery & Collectibles," with the coat of arms of Spain on it. Has anyone seen this type of flag before? It just had the castle, lion, etc..., no crown or pillars.

Juanito V., 14 Sep 2006

That's a banner of arms. As to what it is, I would say a fantasy item made up by some flag maker, considering how dodgy the elements (especialy the lion) look.

Marc Pasquin, 15 Sep 2006