Last modified: 2005-08-26 by antonio martins
Keywords: agualva-cacém | bridge: 1 arch (yellow) | wave | windmill | tiara | clube unidos do cacem | saltire: counterchanged |
Links: FOTW homepage |
search |
disclaimer and copyright |
write us |
mirrors
![[Agualva-Cacém commune]](../images/p/pt-sntac.gif)
This flag is quartered yellow over blue, charged in the center with a round pointed shield — blue, a bridge gold on a fess wavy argent and blue, under two windmill wheels, sailed argent and “roped” gold, in chief, a bishop tiara argent lined red.
The colors of the flag are illegal, for blue is the
shield background color (and the rules say that colors of the charges of
the coat of arms should be used) and yellow touches the edge of the
shield. I’d bet that when (soon enough) Agualva-Cacém become an
“independent” municipality (independent from Sintra, that is) , new colors
will be issued for this flag, and these will be red and white (also to
prevent neighbouring municipalities to have the same colors, since Sintra
is also yellow and blue). The putative new municipality will probably
encompass only the current commune (itself scheduled to be divided into
3 or 4 new communes), so the current municipal flag is likely to be
retainded in the new status. All this would cause the eastern part of
Sintra municipality (Queluz) also to “seceed” (or to become an unlikely
enclave).
António Martins, 06 Mar 1998
Cacém was till 1940 a small village some 20 km away from Lisbon, of no
importance whatsoever apart from being a major railway junction, midway
between the capital and the prestigeous banlieu of
Sintra (of Lord
Byron’s «glourious Eden of Sintra» fame), whose municipality this village
is part of. Then industrialization and rural exodus came to Portugal and
a lot of small villages near Lisbon boomed into cheap and unplanned housing
for thousands of people. In less than 15 years Cacém become Europe’s most
populated commune (comparison makes sense only against countries with
simillary small civil divisions). In that process, the two neighbouring
villages of Agualva and Cacém merged together, and eventually a hybrid
commune arose, called "Agualva - Cacém" — for none of both “belongs” to
the other. Needless to say, it is an awful place, sharing neither the
beauties of the countryside, nor the cultural richness of a real city,
being only a “dormitory” town of people that work in Lisbon all day.
However, it does have a nice coat of arms, and flag, also.
António Martins, 06 Mar 1998
