Portugal - miscellaneous flags

Last modified: 2003-09-13 by antonio martins
Keywords: university | algarve | university of algarve | expo’98 | santa casa da misericórdia de lisboa | miza | coat of arms: escutcheons | skull | cross: latin (golden) | crown | wreath |
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• National Association of Portuguese Municipalities
• Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa
• Expo’98
• University of Algarve
• Movimento de Apoio à Problemática da SIDA

• Portugal

Here, in Portugal, the vast majority of municipalities have come together and created an association to defend the interests of local powers in talks with the central administration. The association is called Associação Nacional dos Municípios Portugueses (National Association of Portuguese Municipalities), and has a flag. Since many of our municipal flags have a gironny pattern, what better flag for the A.N.M.P. than a gironny of red and green?.
Jorge Candeias, 03 Oct 1997

The Lisbon Holy House of Mercy (Santa Casa da Misericordia de Lisboa), created in the last century with the main objective to provide help to the poor, as a charity organization, with strong connections with the church. It’s not the only Holy House of Mercy that exists in Portugal, there are quite a few more, but it’s by far the richest and the better known. I don’t really know much of it’s history and legal status, but I do know that it has had the responsability of managing the profits of most of the legal gambling (lotteries, lottos a.s.o.). It has a very complex arms and a flag, the arms on a white background. The arms consists of a golden scroll reading "MISERICÓRDIA / DE LISBOA" in black capitals, a few green branches that hold two tilted and symmetrical to each other oval sields, one being an oval depiction of the portuguese traditional arms, and the other one containing a white skull and crossbones below a golden cross and the letters "MIZA". The whole thing is topped by a 5-stemmed crown.
Jorge Candeias, 03 Oct 1997

I have mentioned to the list several times before Expo’98, an international exhibition that will take place in Lisbon next year. It will be a thematic event under the theme «The oceans — a heritage for the future». More than 100 countries and organizations will be there, so it will be a major event.

Like other similar events, Expo’98 has a flag of its own. It is, of course, just a logo-on-bedsheet flag, but, since the logo is in my humble opinion a particularly beautiful one, I like the flag quite a lot. The flag is white, with the logo in its superior 2/3 and "EXPO’98" below in dark blue. Above and towards the right, appears the word "LISBOA" in smaller font, also in dark blue.

The logo is basically a blue ellipse raised to the right with white wavy lines that compose the character "E", representing the oceans and their waves, with the "E" for the expo itself. Near the leftmost zone of the “oceanic” ellipse, a yellow semicircle represents the rising sun.

Jorge Candeias, 15 Oct 1997

The flag of my university, the University of Algarve is a blue logo-on-a-bedsheet with the University symbol in white at the centre. The wording "UNIVERSIDADE DO ALGARVE" is part of the symbol, so it is a necessary evil, so to speak. If I recall correctly, the meaning of the eccentric circles is related to the levels of activity of the institution (itself, the city, the region and the country) and to the expansion of the knowledge.
Jorge Candeias, 26 Mar 1998

As far as I can remember, the creator of the University symbol was Gomes Guerreiro [the first Dean of our Uni, JC] and the significance was rather related with the complexity of Life: cell, tissue, organ, organism and intelligence.
Frederico Cardigos, 24 Mar 1999

MAPS is a portuguese AIDS-related NGO (non-governmental organization), and the sigla means "Movimento de Apoio à Problemática da SIDA", that is "Movement for Support of AIDS Problematics", or something of the sort. It made a 2-day congress in my town not long ago, and I could spot their flag there.

It’s one of the most typical of the most typical LOBs: white with logo. But it's even worse than ordinary LOBs not only because the logo ain’t that good in itself (a couple of scrawls based on the AIDS campaign ribbons in weird colours — orange and a sort of greenish brown or grey —, the sigla in black and the full name also in black) but because it’s disposed strangely, slightly curving upwards to the right (note: to the right, not to the fly — I guess this thing is not mirrored in the reverse, though I can’t say ’cause only the obverse was visible), making the whole look quite unstable and unbalanced.

Jorge Candeias, 26 Mar 1998