Vila Flor Municipality (Portugal)

Concelho de Vila Flor, Distrito de Bragança

Last modified: 2024-10-19 by klaus-michael schneider
Keywords: vila flor | fleur-de-lis(purple) |
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• Vila Flor Municipality
• Flag
• Version without Coat of Arms
• Coat of Arms
• Presentation of Vila Flor

• Vila Flor Communes
• Portugal

• Page about Vila Flor at the Portuguese Municipalities’s Association website (incl. image of the arms) reported by António Martins-Tuválkin, 18 Nov 2001

Vila Flor Municipality

Flag

It is a fairly typical Portuguese municipal flag, with the coat of arms centred on a field quartered of yellow and purple.
Sources:
Sérgio Horta´s webpage
photo
photo
António Martins-Tuválkin, 8 Aug 2007

Version without Coat of Arms

The field is quartered of yellow and purple.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 1 Apr 2010

Coat of Arms

The arms are Vert an a fleur de lis Or garnished Purpure. Mural crown Argent with four visible towers (town rank) and white scroll reading in black upper case letters "VILA FLOR"
Meaning:
"Vila flor" means "flower town" in Portuguese; it is almost a compound noun, such as "Flowertown", which makes these arms canting.
For what reason is it emphasized Purpure, you may ask: Why?, to ruin a simple and adequate blazon, uniquely so in Portuguese local heraldry! (Unless it was to avoid unintended usurpation…)
The phrase "vila flor" conjoins the two Portuguese words that mean respectively "town" and "flower", but the exact semantics of this juxtaposition is not trivial: Portuguese, like any other 1st generation Latinate language, doesn´t do the equivalent of English adjective nouns easily, and Flowerto(w)n, albeit on the spot concerning vague meaning would be rather transposed as Vila das Flores. A strict analysis of phrase "vila flor" would yield rather "town which is (a) flower", taking the second word to be a predicative, akin to other unusual noun+noun constructs.
The Portuguese orthography in official use in Portugal up to 1973 left unclear whether the spelling "Flôr" is called for: Disambiguation diacritics for closed vowels "e" and "o" (and open "a"), in paroxytonous words are prescribed for situations where confusion would arise (such as "tôrre", "tower", v.s "torre", "do roast"), but nobody can deny a putative word "flor" (with open "o": "flór") could exist. However, since this time frame was also when upper case letters in Portuguese were excused from most diacritics (exceptions: "À", "É", tildes and cedillas), the matter is moot in what flags are concerned.
Source: Hiperglobal webpage
António Martins-Tuválkin, 8 Aug 2007

Published in Diário do Governo : I Série on 27 April 1935, see here and Decree of Ministry of Interior(Portaria) 8088
António Martins-Tuválkin, 8 Aug 2007

Presentation of Vila Flor

Vila Flor municipality had 7913 inhabitants in 2001 and consists of 14 communes covering 265,52 km². It is part of Bragança District, traditional Bragança District, traditional province and 1999 ref. adm. region Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, C.C.R. / NUTS II Norte, and NUTS III Douro.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 8 Aug 2007

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