Last modified: 2005-08-26 by antonio martins
Keywords: azores | açores | star: 5 points (golden) | stars: arc | stars: 9 | hawk | goshawk | buzzard | anthem |
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![[Azores flag]](../images/p/pt-a.gif)
The Azores flag consists of a 3:2 bicolour of blue and white, being the blue
field, at the hoist, two fifths of the flag’s area. Over the division, and extending
horizontally about half of the flag’s width is a wingspreaded golden goshawk, under
an arch of 9 golden stars, extending from one wingtip to the other. In the honour
point a white shield with a cross of five blue eschuteons, each charged with a
saltire of five white bezants, and with a red border charged with seven golden
castles.
António Martins, 08 Sep 1997 and 12 Dec 1997
The meaning is clear:
The goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) is the celebration of a mistake:
Although
there aren’t nor weren’t any of this bird in Azores, the local buzzards (Buteo
buteo) were confused to be it by the first sailors reaching the islands. That
originated the very name of the islands — "açor" (pl. "açores") means
precisely "goshawk" (the bird on the current Azores flag doesn’t look like a Goshwak
at all, but it is meant to be one).
The nine stars stand for the nine islands, of course:
São Jorge, Santa Maria, Terceira, Graciosa, Faial, São Miguel, Corvo, Pico and Flores.
The honour shield is the lesser arms of Portugal,
of wich Azores are an autonomous region.
António Martins, 08 Sep 1997 and 09 Sep 1999
Is there not a fimbriation around the Portuguese arms on the flag of the
Azores?
Christopher Southworth, 24 Feb 2004
At least the national flag has such a “lining” (I’m
not calling it a fimbriation because it has no heraldic meaning per se),
so perhaps the flag of Azores follows this practice.
António Martins, 25 Feb 2004
According to recent reports in Lusovex, the
flag of Azores is being increasingly standartized to very very dark blue
(B+++ 
, like
UJ’s roundel blue). Earlier lighter
variations (which were never really light, just lighter than this one) are
almost inexistent these days. Example of this, contrasting with the (dark
enough) shade of the EU flag, on this
on
line photo (©DN).
António Martins, 24 Feb 2004
Interesting that the Azores as a whole use the old
monarchist flag as the basis of their own: According to
[mch85], p.135, «The blue-and-white of the
flag is derived from the former royal Portuguese
flag, and it is also linked with the flag of the
Azores Liberation Front which favoured
autonomy.» Are the Azores known as a hotbed of monarchism in Portugal?
Roy Stilling, 29 Sep 1996 and 02 Dec 1997
Not really. The reasons for keeping the monarchist design are deeper than
that. The pro-autonomy movement was born in Azores before the revolution that
ended the monarchy in Portugal, and it is based on a flag that was first
hoisted in the island Terceira, and later, after
a civil war, became the Portuguese national flag.
The autonomist movement just replaced the
Portuguese arms in the center of the flag with a kind
of hawk that refers to the name of the archipelago. When autonomy was granted
in about 1976-77, they just added a lesser Portuguese
arms to the canton to the historical pro-autonomous flag.
Jorge Candeias, 03 Dec 1997
From a leaf of a stamp catalogue on a stamp issued in a two-stamp series on the flags of portuguese autonomous regions (Azores and Madeira), text by Jerónimo Cabral:
The Azorean flag, with its dark blue and white colours and having in the center «a flying goshawk with a stylized naturalist form, in gold», topped by nine stars and with the national coat of arms placed in the upper corner close to the pole, has deep historical roots dating back to late October 1897, when, as can be read in news published in the daily press of the time, for the fist time was hoisted the blue and white flag «definitively adopted to be the symbol of the Azorean administrative Autonomy».
Created to become a mark characterizing the campaigns for autonomy which broke out at the end of the last century in the Azores, the flag of the Administrative Autonomy, although never made legal, was never forbidden either, and in spite of having suffered alterations in the course of popular use, it always maintained the blue and white colours and the symbols of the goshawk and the nine stars.
Moreover, the goshawk already appears in 1582 in coins ordered to be minted by Dom António, Prior of Crato (self-declaired king, against the Spaniards); the same goshawk also appears in a map of Angra do Heroísmo, drawn in 1595 by Jean Hugues Linchosten.
The flag of the Azores, created by Regional Decree No. 4/79/A, of April 10, 1979, keeps the blue and white inherited from the colours of the National flag at the end of last century, which «in turn reproduced the heraldic colours of Portugal», with the goshawk, symbol of the Azores, supporting on its wings nine stars, symbol of the nine islands which comprise the Region; finally, the national coat of arms was added, the only new element in relation to the Autonomy flag of 1897, which, logically, had as the national coat of arms at the time — the royal crown.
This text has at least one mistake (the very ending: the portuguese coat of arms was not the royal crown, but included it on top of a shield identical to the current one), but I think it is quite good in other aspects. The shade of the azorean blue is, therefore, a dark blue. Adding to that, my personal experience and the drawing of the flag in the stamp, showed that the blue field is almost the same size as the white one (only slightly shifted to the hoist).
Jorge Candeias, 18 Oct 1997Last three verses of the second stanza of the Azores regional anthem:
Liberdade, justiça e razão, which means «Freedom, justice and reason / are alight in the high glare / of the flag which guide us».
estão acesas no alto clarão
da bandeira que nos guia
Azores has a total area of 2335 km2, and a population
of 237 315 inhabitants as of 1990 (239 480 as of 1990), living
in 9 islands encompassing
19 municipalities.
António Martins, 24 Jul 2001
