Praia municipality (Cabo Verde)

Konsedju di Praia

Last modified: 2020-12-26 by rob raeside
Keywords: praia | disc (blue) | tree (white) | house | pillory | waves: 4 | coat of arms: quartered | coat of arms: inescutcheon (cross: red) | gyronny: 8 (blue white) | mural crown (golden) | salt | crozier (white) |
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image by António Martins, 17 April 2016

• Description of the flag
• Variant designs
  • Apparent 3:4 ratio
• Emblem detail
  • Variant emblems
    • with scroll with forked ends
    • with colored quarter
    • missing fold lines
• Colonial-era municipal flag
  • Previous colonial-era municipal coat-of-arms
• 1889 signal flag

See also:

• Cabo Verde
• Subnational flags of Cabo Verde

External links:

• about this municipality in English Wikipedia

Description of the flag

A white flag with the logo on it (source: official website). I have found, over the past two years, several versions [of the flag and the emblem].
Jens Pattke, 13 May 2012

Concerning the adoption date, the earliest proof of its existence I found so far is this photo taken on 2008.08.27. The flag, sadly limp for lack of wind, is hoisted on the balcony of the City Hall, to the left of the national flag, and shows the white background and a piece of the scroll — visible as very pale blue: This is either due to sun bleaching (which would date this flag from early 2008 or earlier) or to the use of much lighter colors back then.
António Martins, 21 December 2016

Variant designs

Apparent 3:4 ratio

image by António Martins, 23 March 2017

This photo, posted by Vanja Poposki in the Facebook group I Love Flags without source or comment, shows a variant of the Praia municipal flag: Compared with the image at the official website, the logo uses a much lighter shade of blue and, in what could not be discarded as a meaningless printing variation, the white lines suggesting the folds of the scroll are absent. The flag itself seems at first glance to be 3:4 in ratio (instead of the more usual 2:3) with the logo shifted to the hoist — it may be instead a 3:5 flag with centered logo and the remainder of the fly tucked away (although very carefully so, as it is not visible, hanging at the lower right on the photo).
António Martins, 23 March 2017

Emblem detail

image by António Martins, 17 Apr 2016

The logo is darkest blue and consists of a disc (or a circular shield, if we interpret this heraldically, as seemingly the law does) divided in four quadrants (maybe inspired in the also quartered colonial coat of arms?)by a thin white line, each filled with white on blue monochrome motifs:

• The Ist shows a stylized cityscape, with multistory house outlines with up to five rows of windows; shadows suggest three-dimensionality and this might stand for generic built-up areas, not for a specific building.
• The IInd shows a round-domed tree and its root system, the ground surface suggested by a horizontal hash, in botanical diagram style.
• The IIIrd shows four wavy lines, notably not parallel (in what seems to be a token of poor drawing skills).
• The IVth shows the outline of a pillory — a standalone column on a two-step plinth, topped by a sphere itself topped by a cross.

This version, with the scroll forming smoother loops and not showing forked ends, is shown in the official website and elsewhere.
António Martins, 17 April 2016

Variant emblems

I have found, over the past two years, several versions.
Jens Pattke, 13 May 2012

with scroll with forked ends

image by Jens Pattke, 13 May 2012

Here is another variant.
Jens Pattke, 13 May 2012

This version was possibly outdated/abandoned or even erroneous.
António Martins, 17 April 2016

with colored quarter

Another such variant, with the II quarter of the emblem in colors, can also be found online.
António Martins, 17 April 2016

missing fold lines

Used on a variant of the flag: uses a much lighter shade of blue and the white lines suggesting the folds of the scroll are absent.
António Martins, 10 March 2017

Colonial-era municipal flag

image by Jens Pattke, 25 March 2016

It is a typical Portuguese municipal flag with the coat of arms centered on a white and blue background, gyronny of eight (city status for the municipality seat) by diagonals and apothemas (source: [drn95]).
Jens Pattke, 25 March 2016

Previous colonial-era municipal coat-of-arms

The coat of arms is (in Portuguese):

Brasão:
Coat of arms:

• esquartelado,
  quartered (shield)
  • I. Portugal-Antigo;
    On the Ist Portugal ancien.
  • II. de verde, dez estrelas de seis raios de prata, postas em três palas 3, 4, 3;
    On the IInd Vert ten estoiles Argent set in three pales of three and four and three.
  • III. de azul, uma cidade de prata sobre um terrado de sua cor e uma ponta ondada de azul e de prata;
    On the IIIrd a representation of a city Argent on a ground proper and a base wavy barruly Azure and Argent wavy.
  • IV. de púrpura, uma mitra e um báculo encimados por quatro pedras de sal, tudo de prata;
    On the IVth Purprure a mitre and a crozier topped by four saltstones everything Argent.
  escudete sobre-o-todo de prata carregado com uma cruz da Ordem de Cristo;
  Over all an escutcheon Argent charched with a cross of the Order of Christ.
• escudo encimado por coroa mural tendo por timbre uma roda de navalhas de ouro, e ladeado por dois ramos de verde passados em aspa e atados de vermelho.
  Shield crowned with a mural crown and for crest a St. Catherin wheel Or flanked by two branches Vert per saltire and tied Gules.

This is interesting, as the special characteristic of this crown, it being golden, not silvery (as Praia is was the provincial capital), is not mentioned, and also because a crest (timbre) is mentioned, and the applicable law proscribed implicitly any crests. The image matches the 1961 postage stamp series of colonial municipal coats-of-arms (see stamp in Ralf Hartemink’s website) but Durán’s [drn95] wording seems to predate the law that proscribes crests and makes the crown golden — either the 1930 “dispatch” or some later, more detailed legislation. I would say that the description quoted by Durán [drn95] is the blazon of the pre-1930 arms which was later on minimally changed (off with the crest, paint the crown gold); I have no idea whether this previous coat-of-arms had any flag to go with it, though. (There’s a detail difference, too, as the 1961 image shows 5 saltstones and the pre-1930 text says 4.)
António Martins, 08 April 2016

1889 signal flag

image by António Martins, 06 July 2017

Signal flag legislated to be hoisted on Cabo Verde post offices in 1889-1891 to indicate outgoing and arriving mail ships to/from Praia (main city/port on Santiago island prescribed at the level as islands): Red and white triangular vertical bicolor.
António Martins, 06 July 2017