Last modified: 2011-06-11 by ian macdonald
Keywords: rio de janeiro | brazil | guanabara | coat of arms | arrows | saltire | phrygian cap |
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I now have good information about the flag of the former state of Guanabara,
sent to me by my friend Carlos Noronha of Vitória (Espírito Santo, Brazil).
He scanned a flag of Guanabara, and I produced the image.
Jaume Ollé, 17 August 1996
Guanabara state in Brazil had the same flag as Rio de Janeiro City. The latter
was published in
Gaceta de Banderas #65, sourced by Michel Lupant, but I believe
that image has a small mistake. In the arms of the flag of Guanabara state, there's a
white star in front of the mural crown. In the arms in the flag of the City of Rio de
Janeiro, this star must be suppressed (although it is shown in Gaceta).
Jaume Ollé, 24 January 2001
The municipal flag of Rio de Janeiro was adopted in the year 1908. The State of
Guanabara had the same flag, supplemented with the white star on the mural crown.
Jens Pattke, 6 April 2001
This image shows the Guanabara flag with the blue and gold version of the municipal coat of arms. But the red
version of the coat of arms was on the flag of the old federal district of Rio de Janeiro, which
became Guanabara when the capital was moved. Why would the design of the flag shift to blue at that point? Especially considering that the modern
flag of the Rio municipality, since Guanabara's merger into the consolidated state of Rio de Janeiro,
is also with the red coat of arms.
Joseph McMillan, 15 October 2002
Chambers's Encyclopaedia (London, 1973), in its article "Flag," says
"Guanabara--On white, a blue saltire, in the centre a red badge (1908)." 1908 is
given by
Ribeiro (1933) as the date of
adoption of the flag shown for the old Federal
District.
Joe McMillan, 8 August 2005
In 1960, Brasília was inaugurated as the new capital, in a new federal
district. Not knowing what to do administratively with the city of Rio, which had just lost its
status as national capital, it was decided to upgrade it to the status of a
state. Meanwhile, a State of Rio de Janeiro already existed--the same one from which
the city had been taken in 1831. Therefore, the former Federal District became the newly created
entity of Guanabara State, named after the bay on which the city lies. That Guanabara State,
with barely more than the 1500 km2 of the former national capital, existed only from 1960 to 1975.
In that year, the federal government and parliament passed a law
that joined the existing State of Rio de Janeiro (whose capital was then
the city of Niterói) with the short-lived State of Guanabara.
Guilherme Pacheco translated by António Martins, 17 August 1999