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Goya Department, Corrientes Province, Argentina

Goya

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Goya

3:5 image by Ivan Sache, 5 May 2017

The municipality of Goya (82,714 inhabitants , therefore the second most populated municipality in the province) is located on the eastern shore of river Paraná, here the border with the Santa Fe province, 220 km downstream of Corrientes.

Goya emerged spontaneously, without deliberate planning, in the 18th century as a trade post established on river Paraná. The settlement was named, according to a local tradition, as a tribute to Gregoria ("Goya") Morales, the mother of an influent villager. Bernardo Olivera and his wife, Gregoria Morales, are said to have required the concession of a plot, which was granted on 29 August 1771 by the Royal Government of Corrientes. Gregoria Morales is said to have further managed a busy shop on the river port of Goya. The year of foundation of the town, unknown, was eventually fixed as 1807.
Goya was granted the status of town in 1852 by the provincial government.
http://www.goya.gov.ar - Municipal website

The flag of Goya, designed by Hernán Scheller Romado (b. in 1979 in Goya), was selected on 20 March 2017 in a public contest.
The flag is horizontally divided red-celestial blue-white-celestial blue-green-brown (2:2:2:2:1:1). In the center is placed a yellow disk, in diameter 6/10 of the flag, therefore matching the three central, celestial blue and white stripes, charged with black figures: a Latin cross (center), a swallow (top), a leaf (center left); a human face looking towards the fly (center right), and a fish (bottom).

The red stripe represents Federalism.
The next three stripes represent the Argentine national flag.
The green stripe represents the rich and diversified vegetation.
The brown stripe represents the fertile soil.

The sun is a symbol of unity, truth, clarity, majesty, abundance and wealth, and of liberty, as well.
The swallow is a poet-inspiring bird, at the origin of the partnership with the town of San Juan de Capistrano (USA). Big bands of swallows travel every year between the two towns.
The feminine face is a tribute to the Goya women, who acted with abnegation, of culture and public spiritedness. It is also a token of respect to Gregoria Morales de Olivera - the town's namesake - and Sinforosa Rolón y Rubio, Isabel King, Mariana Encarnación Aguirre Silva, Armanda Ambrosetti de Beltrán, Alcides de las Llanas, Genoveva Poncet, Zulman Isabel Molinari de Baibiene, María Carmen D´Arrigo, María Dolores Millán, Ana Palmira Viñón, Lilia Rosario Lucrecia Spinelli de Chas Grosso, María Luisa Rodríguez, and María Nubia Mendíaz.
The tobacco leaves recall that tobacco cultivation, harvest, industrial processing and trade boosted the development of the town as the second most important in the province.
The cross was used before the Christian era and by non-Christian peoples as a symbol of veneration of the natural environment.
The surubí*, nicknamed the Prince of Paraná, is a symbol of the fish resources of the Middle Paraná. Fishing as a great social significance and is celebrated in Goya by one of the biggest sports festival in the
country.

http://www.ellitoral.com.ar/455362/Simbolos-de-Goya-ahora-flamearan-en-su-bandera - El Litoral, 21 March 2017

*The spotted sorubim, Pseudoplatystoma corruscans (Spix & Agassiz, 1829), is a species of catfish native to the São Francisco and Paraná-Paraguay basins in South America. The Surubi National Festival was first organized in 1969 by the hunting and fishing club Doña Goya. The town was proclaimed Permanent Seat of the Surubi National Festival by Resolution No. 30, adopted in 1980.
http://www.goyasurubi.com - Official website

The adoption of the flag stirred controversy on the social networks. The flag was compared to a Halloween banner. More relevantly, a woman from Goya pointed out that there were too many charges for such a small disk, recommending to keep only the swallow and the fish. The selection process was also questioned: a group of people decided for the flag for the community without asking people's opinion and without showing the other proposals; accordingly, the flag, "with due respect to its designers", cannot represent Goya in any way.
http://www.nortecorrientes.com/article/115941/polemica-en-goya-por-el-diseno-de-la-bandera-de-la-ciudad - Diario Norte, 21 March 2017

Ivan Sache, 5 May 2017