^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries

Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa, CPLP

by Sammy Kanadi

Members and status of the CPLP
Description of the flag
Variations to the flag

See also:

International Organizations

Other sites:

The website of the CPLP (in Portuguese)

Members and status of the CPLP

As far as I know, there are three official multicontinental entities based on cultural ties: Commonwealth, Francophonie and Lusophonia.
Pierre Gay, 03 Dec 1998

The CPLP was created in 1996, and is still quite underdeveloped relative to the Francophonie and the Commonwealth. It has an Executive Secretary (Marcolino Moco, former prime-minister of Angola), and so far its major achievement was to act as a mediator in the civil war in Guinea-Bissau (along with the CEDEAO). It is a strictly political-diplomatic organization with the promotion of the Portuguese language as its only cultural objective. Members are all the lusophonous countries (Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tome e Príncipe) and East Timor as an observer.

On a flag-related note, there’s a very interesting arrangement of the CPLP symbol and the flags of the member-states at this page.
Jorge Candeias, 03 Dec 1998

Description of the flag

I wrote to the CPLP webmaster regarding their flag and got a reply. Here it is (my translation):

Dear Sir,
Contrarily to what some sources may tell you, the correct version of the flag is the one that has the blue border. So, in a flag with 2 m x 1,40 m, the border has 5 cm, the characters "CPLP" have 10 cm of height and the logo has 60cm of diameter. The characters are 12 cm away from the logo and 21,5 cm away from the bottom border.

Concerning the meaning of the logo, contrarilily to what is commonly believed, it has a meaning: Having the circle as the geometric base, it was decided to divide it in seven equal parts, the same as the number of countries of the CPLP. It was used an element on the shape of a wave, representing the sea, that before the common language, was the element that first united those countries. In the centre of this structure a circle concentric to the structure, represents the union element nowadays — the language.</