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Bornos (Municipality, Andalusia, Spain)

Flag of Bornos - Image by António Martins, 27 May 1998

Presentation of Bornos
Symbols of Bornos

See also:

Presentation of Bornos

The municipality of Bornos (8,083 inhabitants in 2013; 5,431 ha; municipal website) is located in the north of the Cádiz Province, 80 km north-east of Cádiz.

Borsno (a castle and a domain) was purchased in 1398 by Per Afán de Ribera (1338-1421), first Great Adelantado of Andalusia (Adelantado Mayor de Andalucía, aka Great Adelantado of the Border, Adelantado Mayor de la Frontera). This hereditary title, created in 1396 by King Henry III to protect the border with the Kingdom of Granada, was kept by the Ribera family, of Galician origin and established in Seville in the 14th century, until superseded by the title of Duke of Alcalá de los Gazules, granted by Philip II in 1558 to Per Enríquez-Afán de Ribera (1509-1571), aka Perafán de Ribera, 2nd Marquis of Tarifa, 5th Count of Los Molares, Viceroy of Catalonia and Naples. The illegitimate son of Perafán de Ribera is known as St. Juan de Ribera (1532-1611, canonized in 1960 in spite of his role in the expelling of the Moriscos from Valencia). Ribera was appointed Archbishop and Viceroy of Valencia and Patriarch of Antioch.

Bornos is, therefore, the proud cradle of the Ribera family, whose members often stayed at Bornos rather than somewhere else and built several monuments in the town. The former Moorish castle was transformed in a palace of Plateresque style (Spanish Renaissance) in the 16th century. The palace's garden was designed on the model of Bramante's Belvedere Garden in Vatican (1501) for Fadrique Enríquez de Ribera, who had travelled to the Holy Land and Italy. The Dame of the castle was said to bathe in the garden's basin to purify her body after having purified her soul in the neighbouring chapel. Restored and transformed by Spanish and Italian artists in the 16th-17th centuries, the castle was purchaed by the municipality from the Ducal House of Medinaceli in 1953. The logia, built as an open-air private museum by architect Benvenuto Tortello, is unique in Andalusia.
Francisco Enríquez de Ribera founded in 1505 the Monastery of St. Mary of the Rosary, famous for its cloister supported by 56 marble columns; a main religious center in the 18th century, the monastery declined and only a small tower and parts of its wall are still visible. Fernando Enríquez de Ribera founded in 1590 the St. Bernardino Convent, used as a college by the Franciscan monks, and also nearly disappeared today.
Perafán de Ribera, in his testament, commissioned his son (St.) Juan to build the Colegio de la Sangre (College of the Blood) to house the Duke's squires and other nobles of low rank but good blood, which was achieved in 1597. Perafán's second will was the building of the Corpus Christi Convent, which was allowed by Pope Clement VII in 1593 and inaugurated in 1597 by Cistercian nuns, subsequently succeeded by Franciscan Clarisses.

Ivan Sache, 3 August 2009

Symbols of Bornos

The flag and arms of Bornos, adopted on 6 July 2004 by the Municipal Council, are prescribed by a Decree adopted on 20 July 2004 by the Directorate General of the Local Administration and published on 3 August 2004 in the official gazette of Andalusia, No. 151, p. 17,150 (text).
The symbols are described as follows:

Flag: Panel in proportions 2;3. Seven equal horizontal stripes; the first, third, fifth and seventh yellow and the three other green.
Coat of arms: Rectangular shield, rounded-off. Or three fesses vert. The shield surmounted with a Royal crown open.

Coat of arms of Bornos - Image by Klaus-Michael Schneider, 30 November 2009

The coat of arms of Bornos was originally prescribed by Decree No. 2,173, adopted on 16 August 1969 by the Spanish Government and published on 1 October 1969 in the Spanish official gazette, No. 235, p. 15,391 (text).
The flag is a banner of the municipal arms, which are, unsurprisingly, the arms of the Ribera lineage. The flag has been used, without official approbation, at least since 1998.

António Martins, Klaus-Michael Schneider & Ivan Sache, 30 November 2009