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Origins of the Aragonese-Catalan Flag (Spain)

Senyera

by Jorge Candeias

Introduction
Catalan Origin of the Flag
Aragonese Origin of the Flag
Legendary Origin

See also:

Aragon (Spain)
Catalonia (Spain)
Other regions currently using the Aragonese-Catalan bars in their flag:
- Balearic Islands (Spain)
- Valencia (Spain)
- Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (France)
- Roussillon (France)
- Andorra (only on the coat-of-arms)
- Sicily (only on the coat-of-arms)
Spain

Introduction

There is an ongoing discussion about the origin of the Aragonese-Catalan flag. The facts that:

it originated in the early middle ages, at a time from when little written or pictorial evidence remains;
shorthly thereafter (1137) the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona merged under a single dinasty;
this dinasty was that of the counts of Barcelona, but used as first title that of King of Aragon because it had protocolary pre-eminence;
the flag was thereafter very widely used as that of the Kingdom of Aragon, both before and after its personal union with that of Castile and Leon (1492), until the end of the Spanish War of Succession (1714), whereby all particular rights of territories supporting the defeated candidate (Archduke Charles of Hapsburg) were abolished;
the flag was used since the early 20th century by Catalan nationalists alone, and during the Spanish Republic (1931-1939) by the autonomous Catalan regional government (Generalitat de Catalunya)

all help to confuse research. This has been furthermore biased since the late 1970's, because of strong Catalan nationalist feelings and the more recent existence of two autonomous communities in Spain (Aragon and Catalonia) using the same Aragonese-Catalan flag (with the only difference of Aragon defacing it with its coat-of-arms).

Santiago Dotor, 20 October 2000

Catalan Origin of the Flag

The flag of Catalonia was originally Catalan, but became the common flag in the entire confederation of Aragon, when the counts of Barcelona (whose was the flag) became firstly Kings of Aragon and later of Valencia and Mallorca.

Xavier Naval, 22 May 1997

The Kingdom of Aragon after 1137: The County of Barcelona (Catalonia) had the four stripes on gold as coat-of-arms almost from the beginning of its history. Its flag is an adaptation of the coat-of-arms. Then Catalonia and Aragon mer