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klaus-michael schneider
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![[ANAFRE flag]](../images/p/pt_anaf.gif)
2:3 image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 3 June 2017
Communal flags in Portugal follow the same rules as municipal — in fact, unless you have an atlas built in your brain or it is written on the flag itself, communal and municipal flags are virtually indistinguishable! The flag pattern (plain, quartered or gyronny) and the number of castles on the mural crown of the coat of arms (3, 4 or 5) do indicate the seat’s rank: village (aldeia), town (vila) and city (cidade) — but that is a not so clear indication, since some cities and most towns (new ones) are not municipality seats… So, one is never sure.
António Martins, 6 Mar 1998
To clarify, in Portugal communes are subdivisions of municipalities; territorially they are total partitions (i.e., each municipality is made up of all its communes and nothing else) and each point of the national territory is assigned to exactly one commune — and thus also to its municipality and so on upwards. (Surface waters, especially on sea, used to be an exception of this rule, but not since 2013.) Archetypically, communes are Voronoi polygons centered on their namesake settlements, and in each municipality one of its communes contains the municipal namesake seat in synonymy; in practice this is very often not so.
To address matters concerning flags, we need not worry too much how the names of communes and municipalities match those of actual settlements, nor how these settlements are formally aggregated vis-à-vis the actual location and spread of dwelling buildings and associated structures on the terrain. That´s because these flags are assigned to municipalities and communes nominally, whatever they maybe in terms of geography.
In such cases where these (too frequent) discrepancies cause confusion and affect flag designs and/or interpretation, even to locals and to Portuguese vexillologists, an explanation needs to be researched and reported.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 3 Sep 2024
Ten years after the 2013 changes that affected more than half of all communes in Portugal (Lei no. 11-A/2013: Reorganização administrativa do território das freguesias published in Diário da República: I Série on 28 January 2013, see here), reducing the total from 4260 to 3092 by creating 777 new communes and disestablishing 1945. The dust has settled. There is relatively little impact on the communal flags of Portugal over all, apart from hundreds of new flags (new ones still being created as we speak) and thousands that had been created, mostly after 2002, becoming no longer in use.
The specs in use for the creation of communal flags remained unchanged at the Comissão de Heráldica da Associação dos Arqueólogos Portugueses (CHAAP), the only design novelty was the introduction of the long toponym type of the scroll, made necessary by the names of most new communes, almost always consisting of concatenated names of the former, amalgamated communes (mostly in pairs, but often three or more), in a formula already used before but multiplied manyfold, compounded by the
totally unnecessary and meaningless epithet "União de Freguesias de" or "União das Freguesias de" or "União das
Freguesias do" or "União das Freguesias da" or "União das Freguesias dos" or "União das Freguesias das", because Portuguese is funny like that.
Said epithet is being slowly dropped from everyday use, however, and we may see in some cases this reflected on the flags in use (irrespective of the legal specification) — even including a reversion to the most usual scroll.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 3 Sep 2024
It should be always stressed that Portuguese communes and municipalities officially do not have a patron saint, both under the modern current Constitution, and under all relevant legislation issued since 1844, when separation of Church and State come to local administration (and even the infamous 1940s agreement between Portugal and the Vatican, which allows for some decidedly unconstitutional stuff like tax exemption and civil law exceptions for some Catholic activity, is clear about communes and parishes being completely separate entities). The only exception, of sorts, the the municipal patron saint or other such Catholic patronage (orago) which determines the yearly communal holiday. However, since there is no such thing as a communal holiday, communal oragos are an irrelevant and likely illegal call back to the time before 1844 when the communes, which Sérgio Horta calls civil parishes in his pages, were the same thing as the (Catholic) parishes. By the 2013 mergers was caused that newly formed communes no longer had a proper orago.
António Martins-Tuválkin and Klaus-Michael Schneider, 4 Sep 2024
Extinct communes will not be granted officially symbols, certainly, as the adoption is actualized by fiat in a proclamation issued by the communal parliament (Assembleia de Freguesia) or assembly (plenário dos cidadãos eleitores), for communes with less than 150 voting citizens) of which is made a communal edict (edital), which in turn gets published in the official journal Diário da República_. And the latter will not publish an edict emmanating from a dissolved body.
But that may not be the end of their story. In some cases the process of adoption might have been underway: A project may exist, or even an assessment from the CHAAP might have been made and sent to the commune. All that is interesting to us.
Flags of extinct communes may also be object of non-official use, as refered, by disaffected parties protesting against the extinction, and this may include flags that were never officialised. We also want to know about that.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 2 Apr 2016
If you know, to which municipality a commune belongs, click on link of municipality, a list of all communes of this municipality will appear. Next choose commune.
If you don't know, to which municipality a commune belongs, visit our keyword page, which is ordered by alphabet and will connect you with our FOTW search engine. Usually also the municipality of the commune is given there in (brackets), if there is more then one commune having the same name.
This list will be continiously updated, click on municipality to open list of its communes!
back to Subdivisions of Portugal click here