Colours of the National Flag (Spain)

Last modified: 2004-04-29 by santiago dotor
Keywords: spain | specification: colour | colour | cie lab | cie 1931 |
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• Meaning of the Colours
• Colour Specifications

See also:

• Colours of Flags
• FOTW Colour Guide
• Historical Flags 1931-1939 (red-yellow-purple flag)
• Spain

Other sites:

• Colour Metric Converter at the ColorPro Communications website
• CIE / Lab conversion utility at the ColorPro Communications website

The colours in the Spanish flag probably originated in the colours of the original Spanish kingdoms' coats-of-arms. Castile has a yellow castle on a red field, Leon has a purple —sometimes dark red— lion carrying a yellow crown on a white field, Catalonia/Aragon has four red vertical pallets on a yellow field, Navarre a yellow chain on a red field (I have deliberately ommitted a correct heraldic blason). There is no specific symbolism in any of those colours, except for the legendary origin of the Aragonese-Catalan arms. One can read all sorts of things like "red stands for the blood shed by Spaniards and yellow for the bright Spanish sun" or even "red and yellow stand for bulls' and bullfighters' blood on the sand of the bullfighting ring", but they are fictitious (and frequently nonsense).

Santiago Dotor, 18 November 1998

What do the colours in the Spanis