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First Spanish Republic 1873-1874 (Spain)

Last modified: 2005-02-12 by santiago dotor
Keywords: spanish republic |
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Description

The First Spanish Republic existed during 1873-1874. Unlike the Second Republic, its flag was the same as the 1785 one only without the crown. Actually the law said a piece of material be stitched over the crown in the existing flags, so the coat-of-arms left was not centred vertically but slightly offset to the bottom of the middle stripe.

Santiago Dotor, 1 July 1999

When the first Republic came into being in 1873 flags with the colour purple appeared in several parts of Spain, mainly in the South and South-East, and many a ship of the Navy in Cadiz and Cartagena unofficially hoisted tricoloured flags of red, yellow and purple horizontal bands, sometimes also in red, white and purple. The first Republic however never did adopt that colour, the national flag remained yellow and red as before — only was the royal crown removed from the coats-of-arms on the flags, being re-established in 1875. There is correspondence in the Archives of the Naval Museum of Madrid about that period, where you can read that the Navy High Command ordered the captains of several men-of-war in the Naval base of Cadiz to remove the tricoloured flags!

Emil Dreyer, 21 January 2001