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Villar del Buey (Municipality, Castilla y León, Spain)

Flag of Villar del Buey, two versions - Images by Ivan Sache, 7 March 2014

Presentation of Villar del Buey
Symbols of Villar del Buey

See also:

Presentation of Villar del Buey

The municipality of Villar del Buey (721 inhabitants in 2010; 13,474 ha, therefore one of the biggest municipalities in the province by its area; municipal website) is located in the south-westof the Zamora Province, on the borders with Portugal (here, river Duero) and the Salamanca Province, 45 km from Zamora. The municipality is made of the villages of Villar del Buey (capital; 326 inh.), Cibanal (101 inh.), Formariz (128 inh.), Fornillos de Fermoselle (85 inh.), Pasariegos (67 inh.) and Pinilla de Fermoselle (68 inh.).

Villar del Buey is a Roman toponym (villa) recalling the Vettones verracos (buey, "an ox" in Spanish). The Celtiberian Vettones are also known as the Culture of the Verracos, referring to the verracos de piedras (lit. "stone boars"), granite sculptures representing pigs, boars, wild boars and bulls found in several sites. King Fernando II of León granted the village to the Order of Saint James.
Fornillos ("furnaces") de Fermoselle was once a ceramists and potters' village.
Pasariegos, as its name says it, was a place of passage between Zamora and Portugal, with the houses lined along the causeway. The village has maintained the very old tradition of randomly allocating every 12 April the plots of land, mostly used to grow rye, among the farmers.

Ivan Sache, 26 April 2011

Symbols of Villar del Buey

The flag and arms of Villar del Buey are prescribed by a Decree adopted on 26 November 1997 by the Zamora Provincial Government, signed on 11 December 1997 by the President of the Government, and published on 30 December 1997 in the official gazette of Castilla y León, No. 250 (text).
The symbols are described as follows:

Flag: Rectangular flag, with proportions 1:1, made of a six equal quadrilaterals, red and white in turn, the quadrilaterals at upper and lower hoist and at mid fly red, the other quadrilaterals white.
Coat of arms: Per fess, 1. Argent an ox [buey] passant sable orled with six roundels gules. The shield surmounted with a Royal crown closed.

The six quadrilaterals on the flag and the six roundels on the arms must represent the six villages forming the municipality.

The Royal Academy of History validated the proposed flag, described with proportions 2:3, versus 1:1 in the Decree. The Academy suggested to change the colour of the ox to gules, deemed "adequate and traditionally used since the old arms of Béarn" (Buletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1999, 196, 2:343-344).

Ivan Sache, 7 March 2014