Michał Zbigniew Dankowski1 Constitutional Graphic Symbols Of
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Przegląd Prawa Konstytucyjnego -----ISSN 2082-1212----- DOI 10.15804/ppk.2018.06.28 -----Nr 6 (46)/2018----- Michał Zbigniew Dankowski1 Constitutional graphic symbols of Spain and its autonomous communities Keywords: Spain, constitution, autonomous communities, flags, coats of arms, heraldry Słowa kluczowe: Hiszpania, konstytucja, wspólnoty autonomiczne, flagi, herby, heraldyka Abstract Flags and coats of arms are graphic state symbols. They define national and regional iden- tity. State and regional graphic symbols have a particularly important place in legal acts in Spain. Symbols of each autonomous community are listed in their statutes. Most of them refer to the rich historical and cultural tradition of the region. In only a few cases, it was necessary to create flags or coat of arms in connection with the establishment of an autonomous community in the early 1980s. Streszczenie Konstytucyjne symbole graficzne Hiszpanii i jej wspólnot autonomicznych Flagi oraz herby są graficznymi symbolami państwowymi. Identyfikują one narodową I regionalną tożsamość. Szczególnie ważne miejsce graficzne symbole państwowe i re- gionalne znajdują w aktach prawnych w Hiszpanii. Symbole każdej ze wspólnot autonom- icznych znajdują się w ich statutach. Większość z nich odwołuje się do bogatej tradycji historycznej I kulturowej regionów. Jedynie w niewielu przypadkach należało stworzyć flagi lub herby wraz z powołaniem wspólnot autonomicznych na początku lat 80.XX w. 1 ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1729-7595, PhD, Latin-American Studies Workshop in Roman Philology Institute of the University of Gdańsk. E-mail: [email protected]. 342 PRZEGLĄD PRAWA KONSTYTUCYJNEGO 2018/6 * I. State and regional symbols are an important element of each state identity and its citizens. They are a link between the citizens and the state, integrat- ing them2. Flags and coats of arms are graphic state symbols. Those sym- bols, defining national and regional identity are a particularly important el- ement of legal acts in Spain. In contrast to the Constitution of Spain, which laconically defines the state symbols, the statutes of the autonomous regions usually precisely define the insignia used in every region. This is due to the complicated regional situation of Spain, a country entirely covered by auton- omous communities. By virtue of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Spain of 1978, the “right to autonomy of nationalities and regions” was recognised and guaranteed3, as well as the right to have own flags and ensigns used together with flag and -en signs of Spain4. Highly developed regionalism had to translate into the crea- tion of separateness also in symbolism and insignia, because “the colours and iconography of flags and state coats refer, apart from history, to the broad- ly understood geographical problems – the natural environment, population and economy of the country”5. Spain is characterised by a rich heraldic tra- dition, and the creation of autonomous communities has placed new regional authorities in the task of establishing insignia reminiscent to the local tradi- tion. In cases of “historical regions”, where regional identity has been well-es- tablished for a long time, there were No. difficulties with finding characteris- tic symbols, often even derived from ready-made solutions, as in the case of the señera or ikurriña. However, in regions that previously did not display au- tonomous claims, local authorities had to resolve this issue in a different way. 2 B. Banaszak, Konstytucja Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej. Komentarz, Warsaw 2012, p. 196. 3 Art. 2, Constitución Española, de 27 de diciembre de 1978 (further: CE), Boletín Oficial del Estado (further: BOE) 311, de 29/12/1978. 4 Art. 4.2, CE. 5 J. Wrona, Analiza elementów geograficznych i ich symboliki na flagach oraz w herbach państw współczesnego świata, Cracow 2002, p. 8. Michał Z. Dankowski • Constitutional graphic symbols of Spain 343 Although coats of arms are older than flags and, consequently, have a great- er tradition, the Spanish vexillum has been mentioned in the Constitution, which means that it is the flag that has the primacy over the coat of arms and other ensigns in the Spanish law system. The image of the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Spain is regulated by a regular law (ley), a lower rank document than the Constitution. II. The Spanish Constitution states that the current flag of the Kingdom consist of three horizontal stripes: red, yellow and red, while the yellow stripe in the middle being double the width of each red stripe6. Although the official state flag of Spain is a relatively young institution, its roots reach the beginning of the real Castilian-Aragonese union. With their appearance on the Span- ish throne, the Habsburgs used on the battlefields and in order to mark the Spanish fleet a flag with a red Burgundian cross on a white background. The Burgundian cross is a variation of the diagonal cross (St. Andrew’s), but its arms are not smooth and symbolize the knots of branches. Although it was not legally regulated, the flag with the Burgundian cross was a symbol of the Spanish imperial monarchy in its lands around the world during the entire Habsburg dynasty rule, and later (with the coat of arms of subsequent mon- archs being imposed on the flag) after the takeover of power by the Bourbons. To this days (with a short break for the period of the Second Republic and the dictatorship of Franco, 1931–1975), the Burgundian cross with the royal coat of arm on the flag is used by the Spanish Infantry Regiments7. It was not until the enlightened Spanish king Charles III of Bourbon, among the numerous reforms and orders he had carried out during his reign, also decided to standardize the question of the state flag. The previous flag had a dominant white background, so it was hardly recognizable from a distance. First of all, it caused problems when trying to distinguish the nationality of a ship on the high seas. In the second half of the 18th century also France (as 6 Art. 4.1, CE. 7 J. Álvarez Abeilhé, La bandera de España. El origen militar de los símbolos de España, “Revista de historia militar” 2010, No. LIV, pp. 37–69. 344 PRZEGLĄD PRAWA KONSTYTUCYJNEGO 2018/6 well as the Italian states under the Bourbon regime) and Portugal had white flags that only distinguished the coatsof arms, and the English flag with the red cross of St. George on a white background was deceptively similar to that one used by Spanish units. In view of the existing situation, Charles III an- nounced in 1785 a contest to create a new flag and chose a proposition with vivid red and yellow colors – placed in such a way that they formed three hor- izontal stripes, where the red ones were extreme and half thinner than the yel- low one located in the middle. On the yellow field there is a crowned round coat of arms consisting of vertical halves, where on the right there was a yel- low castle on a red background, while on the left side a red lion standing on its hind legs turned to the right on a white background8. Although there is No. sufficient confirmation of this fact in the sources, it seems possible that Charles III suggested the color of the flag of the Kingdom of Naples, which he ruled before he took the Spanish throne, and whose coloring comes from the period of Aragonese domination in the Middle Ages. It can therefore be assumed that the colors of the current Spanish flag have their source in the colors of the señera, the oldest flag of the Iberian Peninsula (which will be discussed below), the symbol of the Crown of Aragón, which during the pe- riod of its glory, the late Middle Ages, had a powerful influence on the states of the western Mediterranean Sea. Thus, the Aragonese colors were suppos- edly applied to Spain by a circuitous route through the Apennine Peninsula. The current maritime flag became officially the state flag in 1843 during the reign of Isabela II. From that moment on, with one exception indicated be- low, the Spanish flag was basically subject to minor modifications only in the area of changing the coat of arms: during the First Republic (1873–1874), the crown of the coat of arms disappeared, while during the Franco period, the image of a black eagle holding a shield of arms appeared. The present flag has been in force since 1981 and the place of the previous coat of arms has been assumed nowadays with the current one with the Pillars of Hercules sym- bolizing Gibraltar’s Strait on the sides of the shield, a crown and five fields symbolizing Castile, Leon, Aragon and Navarra, and three yellow lilies on a blue background commemorating the reigning Bourbon dynasty, central- ly in front of the other fields. 8 Ibidem, pp. 56–58. Michał Z. Dankowski • Constitutional graphic symbols of Spain 345 The only period when Spain had a different flag was the time of the -Sec ond Republic (1931–1939), when the traditional flag was replaced with the tri- color, where all horizontal stripes were of the same width and had red, yellow and violet colors from the top. In the central place of the flag on the yellow strip there was located the coat of arms of the state, with four fields symbol- izing historical regions and the Pillars of Hercules on both sides of the coat of arms9. While the red and yellow stripes referred to the traditional Spanish flag, the new violet stripe was a reference to the tradition of the Comuneros Uprising in Castile (1520–1522), a grassroots rebellion against the newly en- throned Habsburgs and the Castilian nobility. The republican government tried in this way to refer to the tradition of the popular struggle against ab- solutism.