Praia municipality (Cabo Verde)

Konsedju di Praia

Last modified: 2026-02-28 by antónio martins
Keywords: praia | disc (blue) | tree (white) | house | pillory | waves: 4 | chain (green) | chain: 5 links | stars: 10 (yellow) | coat of arms: quartered | coat of arms: inescutcheon (cross: red) | gyronny: 8 (blue white) |
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image by António Martins, 17 Apr 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
• Flag use
• Colonial era flags:
  • Colonial-era municipal flag
    • Simplified version without the coat of arms
    • Arms detail
      • Previous colonial-era municipal coat-of-arms
  • 1889 signal flag

See also:

• Cabo Verde
• Subnational flags of Cabo Verde (clickable map)
  • Saint James Island, Cabo Verde

External links:

• about this municipality in English Wikipedia
• Map at OpenStreetMaps

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 Dec 2016

Variant designs

Apparent 3:4 ratio

image by António Martins, 23 Mar 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 Mar 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 multy-story 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.

Digital images of this version, with the scroll forming smoother loops and not showing forked ends, is shown in the official website, and elsewhere.
António Martins, 17 Apr 2016

It can be seen also in “meatspace” use at the city hall: as of 2025.02 (non flag use) and 2023 (flag hoisted on balcony), dispelling any doubts about which is the official version of the emblem.
António Martins, 26 Dec 2025

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/abbandoned or even erroneous.
António Martins, 17 Apr 2016

with colored quarter

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

The official website at CMP.cv holds relevant content only up to 2012 and seems to have been abandoned; its masthead contained the color variant of the logo and one of its latest incarnations, around 2018, redirected to the municipality’s online store, therefore also official, and still showing the colored version.
António Martins, 26 Dec 2025

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 Mar 2017

Flag use

Considering what we know about municipal hall hoisting of municipal vs. national flags in Cabo Verde, these photos show interesting characteristics and variations: The Praia city hall has three slanted flags poles on its main balcony, the middle one being taller (and somehow less slanted) and having been added later (after 2008, before 2012). There are sightings of:

• the national flag alone on the right-side pole: 2012
• both flags, national at the right: 2008, 2012
• both flags, national at the middle, municipal at the left: 2015, 2017, 2025

Upside-down hoisting

Here we see two poles, one for each flag (municipal and national), but both flags are upside down. While the national flag is know to be often flipped thusly, fastening upside down an indoor, eye-level flag, with writing on it, and repatedly so, must have to it more than lack of attention to detail. I suspect that these flags are meant to be hoisted outdoors an the upper hoist side of fastening device doesn’t fit well with the finial of the indoor mount staff. These two cases (the other was in Tarrafal de Santiago) being photo ops for the same outfit (Nos Genti magazine/website), I presume the photographer hoped nobody would notice the unreadable text next to the flattering poses and cheerful dignitas as captured.
António Martins, 26 Dec 2025

Colonial-era municipal flag

image by Sérgio Horta and António Martins, 24 Dec 2025 | (source)

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 Mar 2016

At HeraldicaCivica.PT we can see Sérgio Horta’s account of these arms and flag; unusually, no official journal legal prescription is quoted, so Sérgio’s source was likely the Overseas Armourial [lgh66]. The arms are drawn in the same style as contemporary CHAAP artwork; other sources, such as [lgh66] itself and postage stamps, may differ in details.
António Martins, 24 Dec 2025

Simplified version without the coat of arms

image by António Martins, 28 Feb 2010

Non-monocolored portuguese subnational flags are allowed to have armless variations.
Jorge Candeias, 18 Jul 1999

While the current law, adopted in 1991, doesn’t apply to municipal flags in the colonies, independent in 1975, it however draws most of its content from the 1930 ministerial dispatch, incl. the regulation of armless variations allowed for non-monocolor municipal flags. This 1930 ruling affected all future Portuguese municipal flags, including the colonial ones.
António Martins, Feb 2026

Arms detail

image by Sérgio Horta and António Martins, 24 Dec 2025 | (source)

The coat of arms image from HeraldicaCivica.PT was also uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, whence it illustrates several Wikipedias.
António Martins, 24 Dec 2025

These arms are similar to those of mun. Santa Catarina (Assomada town), differing in the II and III quadrants, likely created in the 19th century.
António Martins, 24 Dec 2025

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 Apr 2016

1889 signal flag

António Martins, 06 Jul 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 same level as the islands): Red and white triangular vertical bicolor.
António Martins, 06 Jul 2017

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