Last modified: 2024-10-19 by olivier touzeau
Keywords: pyrenees-atlantiques | biarritz | bicolour: black-red |
Links: FOTW homepage |
search |
disclaimer and copyright |
write us|
mirrors
![[Flag]](../images/f/fr-64-bi.gif)
![[Flag]](../images/f/fr-64-bi2.gif)
Flags of Biarritz - Images by Olivier Touzeau, 5 June 2022
See also:
Biarritz (Basque: Miarritze; 25,764 inhabitants in 2021; 1,166 ha) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, on the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast. It is adjacent to Bayonne and Anglet and is in the traditional Basque province of Labourd.
Olivier Touzeau, 5 June 2022
Biarritz was until the middle of the XIXth century a poor fishers' village where the inhabitants of the neighbouring city of Bayonne went for swimming. Spanish nobles were also fond of Biarritz, included Countess of Montijo, who stayed in Biarritz with her daughter Eugenia every summer from 1838 onwards. Eugenia married Emperor Napoléon III and became Empress Eugénie; she convinced her husband to go to Biarritz in 1854. The Emperor enjoyed his stay and ordered the next year the building of Villa Eugénie, today Hôtel du Palais. Since then, Biarritz is one of the poshest sea resorts in France, surrounded by six golf greens.
Ivan Sache, 29 April 2005
Municipal flags of Biarritz are rarely observed, and are not flown on the city hall.
The traditional flag of Biarritz is reported as vertically divided red and
black, and is shown this way on most flagmaker’s websites.
However, the only examples of real bicolore municipal flags in Biarritz are
vertically divided black and red, with black at the hoist.
A white flag with municipal logo is also in use. I could only locate them hoisted on the municipal theater of the Gare du Midi
for the occasion of the latin american cultural festival in Biarritz:
Olivier Touzeau, 5 June 2022
The traditional colors of Biarritz were defined in 1603 as being half black
and half red. It was by a letter patent given to Fontainebleau on November
15 of that year that King Henry IV granted "to the jurats (...) elected at
the said place of Biarritz" a "half black and half red cloth hood to be
recognized and discerned"... (Source: municipal website, 2014).
About the logo of Biarritz:
Created in 1992, the first logo represented at the time the characteristics
of a seaside resort: hospitality, 'with open arms' day and night... The
silhouette refers to a legend featuring a goddess of the sea.
The current logotype was adopted since 2003. According to the municipality:
'less seaside', simplified, more universal and more readable, it illustrates
the evolution of Biarritz. Red symbolizes dynamism and energy and refers to
Basque culture. Blue, an institutional and essential color for Biarritz,
recalls the ocean, the sky, the open air. Golden ocher is the light so
specific to Biarritz, the ocher of rock and sand, the heritage.
The City Seal (a 62 mm round seal), affixed to a treaty concluded by
Biarritz in 1351 with the towns of Flanders show on one side five fishermen
in a boat; three of them are rowing, the other two are about to harpoon a
whale. The reverse represents Saint-Martin, the patron saint of Biarritz,
sharing his mantle.
For several centuries, the main wealth of the inhabitants of Biarritz
consisted in the product of whaling, fishing which they had to abandon at
the end of the 16th century, this cetacean having left the area.
The coat of
arms of Biarritz was composed at an undetermined date, probably in the 19th century, according to this seal of the 14th century.
The arms of Biarritz are blazoned:
Azure, on a sea a boat with three oarsmen, one man holding the rudder and one man ready to harpoon a whale, all argent; on a chief or three escallops argent, the third hidden at sinister by a canton gules a mullet argent.
Olivier Touzeau, 5 June 2022
Flag of the association of users of the Port des Pêcheurs - Images by Olivier Touzeau, 5 June 2022
As observed by Dominique Cureau (see Vexillologie provençale website), the colours of Biarritz can still be observed too on the flag of the Association of users of the “Port des pêcheurs” (fishermen’s port) of Biarritz. The flag is black over red, swallow-tailed, with the emblem of the association in white.
I attach here a picture I took there in summer 2021.
Olivier Touzeau, 5 June 2022