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Valverde de Alcalá (Municipality, Community of Madrid, Spain)

Last modified: 2016-05-24 by ivan sache
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Flag of Valverde de Alcalá - Image by Ivan Sache, 3 August 2015


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Presentation of Valverde de Alcalá

The municipality of Valverde de Alcalá (439 inhabitants in 2014; municipal website) is located in the south-west of the Community of Madrid, 40 km of Madrid and 15 km of Alcalá de Henares.

Valverde is locally said to have been originally known as Quejo, which is indeed a deserted village located 3 km of Pozuelo. The tradition says that the inhabitants of Quejo had to leave the village because of the plague and rebuilt it at the modern site of Valverde.
Valverde was first mentioned in 1129, among the villages granted together with the town of Alcalá by King Alfonso VII to the Archbishop of Toledo. The village remained part of the Community of the Town and Land of Alcalá until 1564, when granted the status of villa.

Valverde de Alcalá is the birth town of the musician Antonio Rodríguez de Hita (1722-1787). Appointed Cantor at the cathedral of Palencia in 1744, the musician was ordained priest in 1747 and moved to Madrid in 1765, when appointed Cantor at the Royal Monastery of the Encarnación. After having produced some 250 works of religious music, Rodríguez de Hita set up a partnership with the playwright Ramón de la Cruz; the two co-workers initiated the zarzuela lyric-dramatic genre (Briseida, 1768; Las segadoras de Vallecas, 1768; Las labradoras de Murcia, 1769).

Ivan Sache, 3 August 2015


Symbols of Valverde de Alcalá

The flag (photos, photo) and arms of Valverde de Alcalá (municipal website) are prescribed by a Decree adopted on 24 May 1989 by the Government of the Community of Madrid and published on 20 June 1989 in the official gazette of the Community of Madrid, No. 145, p. 15 (text), and on 9 August 1989 in the Spanish official gazette, No. 189, p. 25,744 (text).
The symbols are described as follows:

Flag: In proportions 2:3. Divided by a diagonal running from the hoist from bottom to top, the upper part, green, the lower part, white, charged in the center with the municipal coat of arms.
Coat of arms: Vert a castle argent surrounded by two cypresses of the same. The shield surmounted with a Royal crown closed.

The Royal Academy of History validated a slightly different coat of arms. The original proposal was "Vert a semy of wheat spikes or a castle argent surrounded by two cypresses of the same." The Academy recommended to drop the cypresses and to keep the spikes The castle makes the arms canting, alcalá meaning "a castle" in Arab. The cypresses and the spikes represent the forest and crop resources of the municipality, respectively.
The Academy validated the proposed flag "without any inconvenience".
[Boletí:n de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1989, 186:2, 311]

Ivan Sache, 3 August 2015