Eight islands, a feeling and three colors. White, blue and yellow, but What is the origin of the Canarian flag and what meaning do its colors have? The banner of the Archipelago took shape in 1982 under the protection of Organic Law 10/1982, just at the time of the confirmation of the statute of Canarian Autonomy.
The tricolor flag of the Archipelago has its origins in the royal standard of the islands, also called the “general flag”, which could be considered the first representative flag of the Canary Islands. As stated in the book Symbols of Spain and its regions and autonomies, andhe Royal Standard was handed over by the alderman Pedro de Vergara to the senior lieutenant of Tenerife Francisco de Valcárcel on January 17, 1561, “of white and blue and yellow taffeta and with a red cross”, the first three colors coinciding with those of the current Canarian flag, which can only be described as an “astonishing historical coincidence”.
However, and although the regional government It has not collected the meaning of said union of colors, currently it is ensured that these represent the two maritime provinces that are in the Canary archipelago; on one side and to the left of the flag Tenerife (white and blue) and Gran Canaria (blue and yellow), to the right. arranged in the order in which the colors can be seen on the flag itself.
In this sense, it was in 1961 when the Canarias Libre movement created a Canarian flag uniting the colors of the flags of the maritime provinces of both islands using vertical stripes. Its design is attributed to María del Carmen Sarmiento, Jesús Cantero and Arturo Cantero. Said flag would be launched in Teror (Gran Canaria) on the eve of the Virgen del Pino festival, and would be used in the demands of the Free Canary Islands Movement. People say that the insignia would achieve rapid diffusion and acceptance among the population, although already detached from any political claim, thanks to the identification of the canaries with the colors of the flags of the maritime provinces. In addition, these colors are those used by the most representative football teams in the Canary Islands, CD Tenerife and UD Las Palmas.
In it Official Gazette of the Canary Islands num. 237, of December 2, 2005, the updating of the Canary Islands Government Graphic Corporate Identity Manual was approved, which specifies the proportions of the flag and the type of official yellow and blue of its colors. On the other hand, two versions of the insignia are also included as the identity of the Autonomous Community: the version without the shield, which corresponds to the description given in the Statute of Autonomy, and the version that includes the Shield of the Canary Islands in the center of the flag.
