Sent: 3.10.2016
Received 10.10.2016
Travel time: 7 days
Sender Ana Sofia from Portugal.
Wiki:
The Flag of Portugal (Portuguese: Bandeira de Portugal) is a
rectangular bicolour with a field unevenly divided into green on the hoist, and
red on the fly. The lesser version of the national coat of arms (i.e. armillary
sphere and Portuguese shield) is centered over the color boundary at equal
distance from the upper and lower edges. On 30 June 1911, less than a year
after the downfall of the constitutional monarchy, this design was officially
adopted for the new national flag of the First Portuguese Republic, after
selection by a special commission whose members included Columbano Bordalo
Pinheiro, João Chagas and Abel Botelho.
The conjugation of the new field colors, especially the use
of green, was not traditional in the Portuguese national flag's composition and
represented a radical republican-inspired change that broke the bond with the
former monarchical flag. Since a failed republican insurrection on 31 January
1891, red and green had been established as the colors of the Portuguese
Republican Party and its associated movements, whose political prominence kept
growing until it reached a culmination period following the Republican
revolution of 5 October 1910. In the ensuing decades, these colours were
popularly propagandized as representing the hope of the nation (green) and the
blood (red) of those who died defending it, as a means to endow them with a
more patriotic and dignified, therefore less political, sentiment. Although the
flag flown from Porto city hall in the morning of 31 January 1891, symbol of
the republican uprising was red and green. Totally red with a green circle in
the center, to which were added the inscriptions referring to the republican
center to whom it belonged - the Centro Democrático Federal 15 de Novembro.
The current flag design represents a dramatic change in the
evolution of the Portuguese standard, which had always been closely associated
with the royal arms, blue and white. Since the country's foundation, the
national flag developed from the blue cross-on-white armorial square banner of
King Afonso I to the liberal monarchy's arms over a blue-and-white rectangle.
In between, major changes associated with determinant political events
contributed to its evolution into the current design.
