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City of Tarifa (Andalusia, Spain)

Cádiz Province

2:3 | stripes 4+1+1
image by Klaus-Michael Schneider, 02 Dec 2009

Description
Variant or Erroneous Depiction

See also:

Cádiz Province (Andalusia, Spain)
Andalusia (Spain)
Spain

Description

This webpage reported image by Dov Gutterman contains an article by Spanish vexillologist Tomás Rodríguez on the flag of the town of Tarifa, published on the September 1992 issue of Aljaranda, Revista de Estudios Tinerfeños. The flag was approved by the town council on June 12th 1992 and first hoisted on September 21st 1992. The flag is based on the coat-of-arms granted on January 29th 1968 (but is not a banner of arms), and described as:

Bandera rectangular, de proporciones 2:3, compuesta por tres franjas horizontales, roja la superior cargada con tres llaves amarillas verticales, blanca la central y azul la inferior de proporciones 2/3, 1/6 y 1/6 respectivamente.

that is a flag with a 2:3 ratio, made up of three horizontal stripes, the topmost red charged with three vertical yellow keys occupying 2/3rds of the height, the middle one white and the bottom one blue both 1/6th of the height.

Santiago Dotor, 12 Jul 2000

I saw this flag on 7 November 2009 in Tarifa’s harbour. The three keys are longer, spread out over nearly the complete red stripe, their heads and beards have different shape and the beards point towards the hoist.

[dyo69] p.207 ff. explains that the coat of arms often showed a castle flanked by three keys which appear also on the flag. Without any doubt, the castle is that of Guzmán the Good, whose son lost his life in service. There are different explanations for the keys. In 1782 Ignacio LÓPEZ de AYALA tells in “Historia de Gibraltar”, that there is an old refrain: “The house of Guzmán has the key of the one and the other sea” (that is, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean). Another explanation, given in [dyo69], p.270, says that the keys are an allusion to the three gates of Guzmán’s castle: the gate of Aljaranda, the gate of Almedina and the gate of the sea.

Klaus-Michael Schneider, 02 Dec 2009

Variant or Erroneous Depiction

2:3 | stripes 4+1+1
image by António Martins