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Municipality of León (León Province, Castile and Leon, Spain)

by Antonio Gutiérrez

Description

See also:

León Province (Castile and Leon, Spain)
Castile and Leon (Castilla y León, Spain)
Spain

Description

The flag used unofficially by the municipality of León is purpure, with the coat-of-arms in the middle: Argent, a lion Gules; crest: a Spanish marquis' crown Or; escutcheon within a cartouche Or.

Antonio Gutiérrez, 15 July 1999

The city of Leon's flag is very similar to that of the province, according to Antonio Gutiérrez. The similarities however seem to be greater. Unlike the flag in FOTWws, the flag displayed at Leon's city hall had no cartouche bordering the coat-of-arms, and the lion was crowned. There was no wind and the flag stood still, hiding some detail, so I could not tell out the shape of the lion's tail — a further difference from the provincial flag.

Actually, none of the flags I saw in Leon city had a cartouche bordering the coat-of-arms. On the other hand, Antonio Gutiérrez's coat-of-arms above is an excellent rendering of the one used by the city council in documents, proclamations etc. — but apparently not in the flag. Actually I saw one more "misuse" of that coat-of-arms outside the flag: for instance, the Leon Police Department uses a coat-of-arms with a crowned lion.

Santiago Dotor, 14 October 1999

You are surely referring to the flag displayed in the former city hall building. This is the one shown in FOTW as the Leonese nationalist flag. As I wrote in that page, the flag is today widely used, even in public (municipal) buildings in Leon [city] and throughout the province. What Santiago Dotor saw is an example of what I am referring to. In the new city hall the flags are displayed in the roof, too high to see clearly the model of Arms used.

Unlike the provincial government (Diputación Provincial), that always uses the same model of Arms, even in the flag, the municipal government (Ayuntamiento) uses a wide variety of Arms with different lion's renderings (differences in tail, lion crowned or not, shield shape, even different crowns as crest) in local police cars and uniforms, street name plates, etc.; the official design, as Santiago Dotor points out, used in official documents, is the one displayed above.

Antonio Gutiérrez, 15 October 1999