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City of Madrid (Madrid, Spain)

Villa y Corte de Madrid

3:5
by Santiago Dotor

2:3
by Santiago Dotor

Flag Specifications
Flag Variants
Coat-of-Arms
Pre-1988 Flag

See also:

Flag Specifications

I saw the Madrid City (Spain) flag and the design is correct but the colour should be purple instead of red.

Julio Hernanz, 3 August 1998

In the SEV pages it's neither purple nor burgundy: it's simply red. I suppose that the guys at SEV know what they are talking about.

Jorge Candeias, 4 August 1998

I believe the flag of Madrid is carmesí: [crimson] (dark red, but less dark that Latvia; like the old Soviet Union or so).

Jaume Ollé, 7 August 1998

The flag is crimson — a very dark shade of red (with some drops of purple :-) ), with the coat-of-arms in the middle. I have GIFfed two versions of the Madrid City flag, according to information requested from the Madrid City Council information board (my translation):

(...) Legislation concerning the flag and coat-of-arms of the city is the By-Law for Protocol and Ceremony, passed by the Joint City Council on December 22nd 1988. An abstract of the articles referring to the flag and coat-of-arms follows: (...)

Title I, Article 3: The coat-of-arms of Madrid has the following heraldic components: argent, a strawberry tree vert [rather "proper" since the trunk is always shown brown] fructed gules and a bear rampant sable on a terrace vert, a bordure azure with seven [six-pointed] mullets argent; crest an open royal crown.

Article 4: The flag of the City of Madrid is made up of the coat-of-arms described in Title I, Article 3, centered on a [field of] crimson colour.

There are apparently no laws on the proportions of the flag and of the coat-of-arms within it, but they told me:

(...) There are two flag sizes: 1.50 m wide x 2.50 m long [which gives a ratio 3:5]; 2.00 m wide x 3.00 m long [which gives a ratio 2:3]. As for the coat-of-arms, the sizes are as follows:

Coat-of-arms: 49.5 cm height [including crown];
Crown: 31.5 cm width;
Strawberry tree: 36 cm wide [impossible, perhaps 3.6 cm for the stem?]

The coat-of-arms seems to have the same size regardless of the flag size. I have made two separate GIFs for the flag, a 3:5 version, a 2:3 version (the coat-of-arms appears smaller, since the flag size is larger); and one more for a detailed coat-of-arms. I have used FOTW dark red (R+) for the flag since it is nearer what I understand as "crimson" and specially because it is what I see daily in Madrid!

Santiago Dotor, 10 December 1998

Flag Variants

[During a recent vacation, I noticed that] the flag of Madrid city has the city arms on a plain field of an unusual shade of red that my wife (an artist) described as vermillion. Two drawings of this flag appear on FOTW, but the colour of the field does not look right (on my monitor at least) and the shields are much smaller than those on the flags that I saw.

Vincent Morley, 9 October 1999

Both the shade of "crimson" (carmesí) and the sizes of the escutcheons are the ones described to me by the city council's information service. Unofficial variants are of course frequent however.

Santiago Dotor, 14 October 1999

I attach a GIF of the flag of Madrid city, as it appeared when I visited there recently. It differs from the drawing at FOTW-ws in having a noticeably larger shield, and in the colour of the field. (I described this in a previous message —quoting my wife— as vermillion, but she now tells me that she meant to say magenta). Whatever it's called, it differs considerably from the normal red of the Spanish flag and that of the Madrid Autonomous Community. In reality, the colour is somewhat darker, but I have used the best browser-safe approximation. The drawing of the shield is based on the image that appears on the cover of a map of Madrid that I have — it is not an official publication and the arms may differ in detail from the official ones.

Vincent Morley, 17 October 1999

Please note the coat-of-arms is a former version
by Vincent Morley

Even if the field is defined by Law to be "crimson", I agree that the colour of flags displayed at official buildings is somewhat "purplish". Vincent Morley's GIF looks too faded to me, darker would be more correct. The coat-of-arms in this GIF is the 1970's-1988 one. As for the size of the arms, these fit neither the official sources nor most of the flags I see daily (which are generally the 1,50m x 2,50m ones ie. 3:5). Where did you see such large arms, Vincent?

Santiago Dotor, 18 October 1999

I agree [that darker would be correct] — but I couldn't get a browser-safe that was closer. I think that colour of the flag I sent is 'qualitatively' correct but too light, as Santiago says. An RGB value of 220-0-90 looks about perfect on my monitor. [As for the arms being an old version] I am sure that Santiago is correct about this — I wasn't close enough to see the details of the arms so I just took it copied the GIF from a map of Madrid. The flags I saw seemed to have arms about half the height of the flag — the crown included. The area where I saw most of them was around the calle de Alcalá and the paseo del Prado — I couldn't name the buildings but a couple were hotels.

Vincent Morley, 19 October 1999

The official civic flag of the city of Madrid, flown on the balcony of the city hall and on balconies of the dependent city district halls as well as on flag poles here and there (not too many Madrid flags are to be seen in fact) has a very dark red, almost purple [field] and a tiny civic coat of arms in the centre. The GIF by Vincent Morley shows a too large coat-of-arms and a too bright red. The shade of red is nearly as dark as the red of the Georgia national flag, just a bit brighter. Compare also Santiago Dotor's contribution to this problem. I have seen the Madrid flag since I was living in Madrid in the late 60's and ever since, recently during my stay in Madrid last week.

Emil Dreyer, 24 October 1999

Coat-of-Arms

by Santiago Dotor

There are many versions of the Madrid (city) coat-of-arms, which I would summarize into three:

(a) A "simple" coat-of-arms, "argent a strawberry tree vert fructed gules and a bear rampant sable on a terrace vert, a bordure azure with seven mullets or". I would call this "Madrid ancient". The shield bears an open royal crown.
(b) A "complete" coat-of-arms, "per pale azure a dragon or, and argent a strawberry tree vert fructed gules and a bear rampant sable on a terrace vert a bordure azure with seven mullets or, in the point or a wreath vert with a ribbon gules". I would call this "Madrid modern" since the dragon and wreath seem to date from the 19th century. The shield bears an open royal crown.
(c) An "official" coat-of-arms [es)m-m88.gif above], similar to (a) but graphically defined in a very stilised and logo-looking way (tree and bear are only outlined, the treetop is a perfect ellipse, the fruits are small red circles...). The Madrid City Council held a contest in the late 1980s to choose this new logolike coat-of-arms.

You can see depictions of (a) and (b) in Ralf Hartemink's website.

Santiago Dotor, 10 December 1998

Pre-1988 Flag

by Jaume Ollé

The Madrid city flag by Jaume Ollé is correct, only the one with the pre-1988 coat-of-arms. This was heraldically equivalent, but in the late 80s the City Council held a contest to have a redesigned modern-looking coat-of-arms. Bigger old-style coat-of-arms (but with wrong crown) in Ralf Hartemink's website where the older "full" arms can also be seen (with dragon and wreath).

Santiago Dotor, 10 December 1998