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![[Flag]](../images/e/es-to-co.gif)
Flag of Consuegra - Image by Ivan Sache, 9 September 2019
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The municipality of Consuegra (10,437 inhabitants in 2015; 35,849 ha; official website) is located 80 km south-east of Toledo.
Consuegra was first established in the second Age of Iron (5th century BC) on the Calderico hill. After the Roman conquest, the town was rebuilt downhill in the plain. Consabura was first documented in 73, when granted the Latin Law by Emperor Vespasian. The ruins of the barrage that supplied the town with water are still standing. The town declined in the Visigoth period to a satellite of Toledo.
In the Middle Ages, the town was progressively resettled due to the strategic role played by its castle. The town was a nevralgic center in the struggle for the border control in Upper Mancha from the 11th to the 13th century. The son of the Cid Campeador was killed in 1087 during the battle of Consuegra, which opposed the Christians to the Almoravids. In 1183, Consuegra and its alfoz (group of villages) were granted to the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem; Consuegra was the capital of the Grand Priorate of Saint John of Jerusalem in Castile and León. In the aftermath of the battle of Alarcos (1195), the last critical period of the border, the castle successfully protected access to Toledo. The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) moved the border far away from Upper Mancha, suppressing the strategic significance of the castle.
To resettle the area, the Order of Saint John extended the rights granted to Consuegra to the whole district, while the castle was transformed into an administrative center where the demographic and colonizing policy was organized.
Incorporated to the Royal domain, Consuegra was in the 16th century the birth town of famous people, such as Friar Juan Cobo (1547-1593; biography), who translated the Bible into Chinese. Appointd Prior of the Order of Saint John, Juán José of Austria, the natural son of Philip IV and half brother of Charles II, established his headquarters in Consuegra.
The castle, the church and several buildings in the town were sacked and destroyed in 1813 by the French troops. On 11 September 1891, a flood by river Amarguillo claimed 400 lives and suppressed the three medieval bridges that crossed the river. The catastroph stirred a great movement of solidarity all over Spain, initiated by José Ortega y Munilla - the father of the philosopher Ortega y Gasset, editor of the newspaper El Imparcial. Another newspaper, El Faro de Vigo, related the efforts made by the survivors to rebuild the town. This support is recalled in the toponymy by the El Imparcial borough, the Vigo square and the Madrid square.
Purchased in 1960 by the municipality, the ruined castle was restored, together with a row of 12 flour windmills named Clavileño, Espartero, Rucio, Caballero del Verde Gabán, Chispas, Alcancía, Cardeño, Vista Alegre, Sancho, Mochilas, Mambrino, and Bolero (with complete mechanism).
Consuegra is one of the capitals of saffron cultivation in Spain. In 1183, Alfonso VIII prescribed that the Court should be supplied with 1/3 of the saffron harvested in Consuegra. The Saffron Rose Festival, created in 1963, takes place every year in October, at a precise date depending on saffron maturation.
Ventura García-Sancho e Ibarrondo (1837-1914), Mayor of Madrid (1899-1900), State Minister (1900; 1904), and President of the State Council (1902, 1904), was made in 1905 Count of Counsuegra by King Alfonso XIII. The current, 6th, Count of Consuegra is Jaime Travesedo Juliá (b. 1977).
Ivan Sache, 9 September 2019
The flag of Consuegra is prescribed in a Decree adopted on 10 April 2007 by the Government of Castilla-La Mancha and published on 20 April 2007 in the official gazette of Castilla-La Mancha, No. 83, p. 9,799 (text).
The flag is described as follows:
Flag: Rectangular panel, one and a half longer that wide, vertically divided in three parts, the parts at hoist and fly, green, twice longer than the central part, red.
The flag in actual use (photo, photo, photo, photo, photo, photo) is charged in the center with the municipal coat of arms.
The coat of arms of Consuegra is prescribed in a Decree adopted on 10 April 2007 by the Government of Castilla-La Mancha and published on 20 April 2007 in the official gazette of Castilla-La Mancha, No. 83, p. 9,799 (text).
The coat of arms is described as follows:
Coat of arms: Spanish shield. Vert a castle or masoned sable port and windows azure surmounted by an eight-pointed cross argent. The shield surmounted by the crown of the Constitutional Monarchy, that is, a Royal crown closed.
The symbols were designed by the historian and heraldist Ventura Leblic. The flag, "unique in the world", uses the green colour of the coat of arms and the red color of the Maltese cross. The coat of arms was "rehabilitated" to its original design, dropping the Collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, which can be used only by the Royal family.
[ABC, 20 May 2007]
The same arms, without the cross and the heraldic frame, are shown on the side door of the main facade of the Town Hall, dated 1670. Lorenzana's Relaciones still only mentions the castle. The cross appears to have been added in the 19th century. A Ministry Order issued in 1878 granted to the town arms featuring a castle surrounded by two small, illegible charges and surmounting two branches crossed in saltire. Soemtoimes, and still today, the shield is surrounded by a Golden Fleece, for whatever reason, and placed over a big Maltese cross.
[José Luis Ruz Márquez & Ventura Leblic García. Heraldica municipal de la Provincia de Toledo. 1983]
Ivan Sache, 9 September 2019
![[Flag]](../images/e/es-to-c1.gif)
Former flag of Consuegra - Image by Ivan Sache, 9 September 2019
The symbols were originally approved in February 2003 by the Municipal Council. The councillors of the PSOE and of the PP voted for the deisgn, while the councillor of IU abstained from voting, "being not totally convinced by the viability of the realized study, while recognizing the work done". Not satisfied with the proposals submitted by a private company, the Municipal Council commissioned José Lara Gómez-Miguel, a municipal civil servant, to submit another proposal. Several citizens appealed the proposed arms, questioning the charges, to no avail. Lara's design showed the castle on a perchment surrounded by the Golden Fleece and superimposed with a Maltese Cross.
[ABC, 16 February 2003]
Ivan Sache, 9 September 2019
