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Muga de Sayago (Municipality, Castilla y León, Spain)

Last modified: 2020-02-17 by ivan sache
Keywords: muga de sayago |
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[Flag]

Flag of Muga de Sayago - Image by "Nethunter" (Wikimedia Commons), 14 March 2011


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Presentation of Muga de Sayago

The municipality of Muya de Sayago (400 inhabitants in 2010; 3,642 ha) is located in the southwest of Zamora Province, 40 km from Zamora.

Ivan Sache, 14 March 2011


Symbols of Muga de Sayago

The flag and arms of Muga de Sayago are prescribed by a Decree adopted on 23 December 1998 by the Zamora Provincial Government, signed on 3 February 1999 by the President of the Government, and published on 12 February 1999 in the official gazette of Castilla y León, No. 29, p. 1,519 (text).
The symbols are described as follows:

Flag: Rectangular flag, with proportions 2:3, made of two equal vertical stripes, the stripe at hoist white, the stripe at fly blue with a white fleur-de-lis.
Coat of arms: Per pale, 1. Gules a pennant argent, 2. Argent an open book gules charged with an inkpot argent and a quill of the same, grafted in base azure a fleur-de-lis argent. The shield surmounted with a Royal crown closed.

The symbols were designed by Tomás Rodríguez Peñas (document dated 11 May 1998).
On the arms (text), the first quarter has a red background, of the colour of Castilla y León, charged with a white pennant. The village has preserved an old tradition called the Dance of the Flag (Baile de la Bandera; presentation), celebrated during the St. Rocco's Festival and alluding to the struggle against the Moors; a local tradition says that the village was once called La Muda, from Basque muga, "a border". Moreover, a white pennant is also carried in procession on Easter Monday to the Fernandiel chapel. The second quarter, with the book, inkpot and quill, recalls that Muga de Sayago is the seat of an educational institution of regional significance. In base, the fleur- de-lis and the Marian colors symbolize the patron saint of the village, Our Lady of the Ascension, whose statue is kept in a chapel all the year long but for a month starting on Easter Monday, when the statue is carried in procession to the parish church.
On the flag (text), the white field represents the historical white pennant while the blue field with a white fleur-de-lis represents Our Lady of the Ascension.

The Royal Academy of History rejected the symbols for "several reasons". The inclusion of a charge representing a specific object, here the pennant, is not compliant with "good style". The figure of the book with inkpot and quill is considerably remote to traditional use, and the justification for its use is "of little merit". Finally, the flag shows only one of the charges of the coat of arms, and the one shown in the last place of precedence. When a flag contains heraldic charges, their representation should match exactly the coat of arms (Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 2000, 197, 2:362).

Ivan Sache, 16 February 2014