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Baza (Municipality, Andalusia, Spain)

Flag of Baza - Image image from the Símbolos de Granada website, 7 June 2017

Presentation of Baza
Symbols of Baza

See also:

Presentation of Baza

The municipality of Baza (20,668 inhabitants in 2015; 54,500 ha, therefore the biggest municipality in the province by its area; municipal website) is located 110 km east of Granada, on the border with the Province of Almería.

Baza was known to the Iberians as Basti; archeological remains and artefacts dated to the 4th century BC indicate the significance of the town, which traded with Greece. The Cerro Santuario hill, where the Lady of Baza and the Baza Warrior's Torso were excavated, was most probably the site of one of the oldest necropolis known in Spain. The town controlled the roads connecting the south-east of the region of Murcia with upper Andalusia and the mines of Castulo (Linares).
The Muslims conquered the town in 713. Madinata Bastah was a wealthy town, with baths (13th-14th) that were fully restored in 2009. The town was reconquerred by the Christians in 1489.

The Lady of Baza, excavated in 1971 and kept in the National Archeological Museum (presentation), is a stone statue representing a lady from the aristocracy of Basti, heroicized during a specific funerary ritual. The statue was also used as a funerary urn, which is not common. The lady sits on a winged chair, a symbol of divinity, and holds a small pigeon in the left hand, as a symbol of the connection between the mortal woman and the goddess, who protects both the pigeon and the remains of the defunct woman. The iron stuff made of four warrior's outfits, placed at the woman's feet like an offering, reflects the funerary ceremonial involving warrior's fighting.
The Baza Warrior's Torso, excavated in 1996 and kept in the Baza Archeological Museum (presentation), together with a replica of the Lady, is dated to the 2nd-1st century BC. Like the Lady of Baza, it is the representation of a high-rank person or warrior, to be used in funerary rituals.

Ivan Sache, 20 November 2016

Symbols of Baza

The flag of Baza, adopted on 22 February 2017 by the Municipal Council and submitted on 14 March 2017 to the Directorate General of the Local Administration, is prescribed by a Resolution adopted on 17 March 2017 by the Directorate General of the Local Administration and published on 24 March 2017 in the official gazette of Andalusia, No. 57, p. 99 (text).
The flag is described as follows:

Flag: Rectangular, red, in the center the Medina or urban nucleus of Baza, surrounded by its wall and surmounted by its citadel. Surrounded by two ditches, two bridges and two watercourses, the whole surrounded by 16 towers. The charges represented in yellow with blue ports and windows, the watercourses also blue. The buildings located inside the wall with red, not blue, ports and windows.

The flag was proposed by a commission mace of eight members: Miguel Amezcua (member of the Spanish Vexillological Society and of Instituto de Estudios Pedro Suárez), Lorenzo Sánchez (director of the Municipal Archeological Museum), Francisco Tristán (Professor of History, historian and director of the review Péndulo), Miguel Navarro, Sebastián Manuel Gallego Morales, José Ramón Noguera, María Concepción García Granados, Javier Castillo (historian and Archivist of the General Archives of the Region of Murcia), and Yolanda Fernández.

Red is the colour of the Royal banner kept in the Archeological Museum, of the municipal arms, and of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada.
The coat of arms was sculpted in 1592 on the facade of the old Town Hall. Granted by the Catholic Monarchs in 1494, the arms feature an image of the town as it was in 1489, when reconquerred by the Christians. The urban nucleus was surrounded by walls and overlooked by the citadel, erected on top of the town. The wall was protected by 16 towers, two ditches, two bridges, and two watercourses.
[Ideal, 12 November 2016]

The set up of a public contest for the design of the flag of Baza was required by the Municipal Councillors representing the Partido Andalucista, in 2012 and 2016, to no avail.
[Andalucistas for Baza, 2 March 2012; 2 February 2016]

Ivan Sache, 20 November 2016