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Santomera (Municipality, Region of Murcia, Spain)

Flag of Santomera - Image by Ivan Sache, 10 May 2015

Presentation of Santomera
Symbols of Santomera

See also:

Presentation of Santomera

The municipality of Santomera (15,860 inhabitants in 2014; 4,420 ha; municipal website) is located in the east of the Region of Murcia, on the border with the Valencian Community (Province of Alicante), half distance (10 km) of Murcia and Orihuela. The municipality of Santomera was established in 1978.

Santomera was first documented in 1272, when King Alfonso X the Wise shared the lands reconquerred from the Moors. Santomera appears to have been named by Catalan re-settlers from Bañoles after their patron saint, the Benedictine monk St. Omer. The village was mentioned in the 15th century as depending on Beniel, a big rural domain established by Lorca Gil Rodríguez de Junterón. Mining boosted the development of Santomera, which was in the 16th century one of the most populous settlements in the Kingdom of Murcia.

Ivan Sache, 10 May 2015

Symbols of Santomera

The flag of Santomera (municipal website) is horizontally divided blue-white-green (1:2:1) with a yellow triangle placed along the hoist and the municipal coat of arms in the middle.
Blue represents the sky, white represents peace, green represents the irrigated fields, and yellow represents lemons.

The coat of arms of Santomera is prescribed by Royal Decree No. 2,533, adopted on 24 November 1982 and published on 8 October 1982 in the official Spanish gazette, No. 241, pp. 27,874-27,875 (text).
The coat of arms is described as follows:

Coat of arms: A shield in Spanish style, Per fess, 1. Vert a lemon tree or fructed of the same, 2b. Argent three united hands proper. 2b. Gules seven crowns or placed 1, 3, 2 and 1. The shield surmounted by a Royal crown.

The coat of arms in current use has the lemon trees vert on a field argent, and the lower quarters swapped.
The lemon tree recalls that Santomera is "the lemon grove of Europe". The crowns refer to Santomera's mother municipality, Murcia. The hands represent the three villages of Santomera, La Matanza and El Siscar. The lemon tree was designed from scratch by Luis Pina Cano. The seven crowns were designed by Enrique Pinar Rodríguez, on the model of a 25 pesetas coin. The hands, designed by Luis Pina Cano, are those of Enrique Pinar Rodríguez, Francisco García Lax and Joaquín Muñoz Calderón.
[Municipal website]

The Royal Academy of History validated the proposed coat of arms, warning that the representation of three hands in the 2nd quarter would be graphically difficult. The 1st quarter is described as "Vert a lemon tree of the same fimbriated sable fructed or".
[Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 1983; 180, 2: 416]

Dov Gutterman & Ivan Sache, 10 May 2015