Last modified: 2025-05-03 by olivier touzeau
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Main flag of Ille-sur-Têt - Image by Olivier Touzeau, 2 March 2025
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Ille-sur-Têt (5,546 inhabitants, 3,167 ha) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales département.
The commune is in Roussillon, a former province of the Kingdom of France, which existed from 1659 to 1790 and which covered the three vigueries of Roussillon, Conflent and Cerdagne. Conflent corresponds to all the Pyrenean valleys which "merge" with the bed dug by the Têt between Mont-Louis, gateway to Cerdagne, and Rodès, on the edge of the Roussillon plain. In the 9th century, the name is attested in the form Yla. In 1793, the name of the town was Ille and officially became Ille-sur-Têt on March 11, 1953.
Among the highlights of the town's history, its siege during the Reapers' War (1640-1659): 5,000 Spanish soldiers led by Juan de Garay Otañez, with cavalry and four artillery pieces from Perpignan, attacked the city from September 23 to 29, 1640. They were repelled by the 600 French of George Stuart, 9th Lord of Aubigny. The resistance of the population and the threat of the arrival of French reinforcements discouraged the Spanish who lifted the siege.
The village is also geologically characterized by the existence on its territory of fairy chimneys which have been named Organs of Ille-sur-Têt and which were carved into Pliocene sediments.
Olivier Touzeau, 2 March 2025
Coat of arms of Ille-sur-Têt
The arms are Azure, a banner Argent with the hoist Or.
The azure is most certainly a reminder of the arms of the Canet family
with whom the Viscount family of Ille was allied.
The palms around the shield are a reference to Saint Etienne, patron
saint of the city.
Flags of Ille-sur-Têt - Image by Olivier Touzeau, 2 March 2025
Photos of the main flag: photo (2019), photo (2023), photo (municipal website).
This article [source: lindependant.fr] gives the history of the city flags.
"Four flags fly on the façade of the new town hall: the tricolour, the European Union flag, the Catalan flag and the city flag. The city's flag is blue and white, "Two bands of equal width perpendicular to the hoist. The one at the top is white, the other is blue", as Maurice Iché (1906-2003), former mayor of Ille (1959-1977) explains in the "Cahier des amis du vieux Ille" No. 56, of which he was the founding president in 1962. As he had initiated the blue and white cap of the Complementary Course of which he was director and innovative teacher, Maurice Iché is at the origin of the choice of these colours and this emblem.
On October 26, 1976, he proposed three models of flags in the municipal council, "responding to the request of the organizers of sporting events at the municipal stadium who expressed the desire that the flag of our city could be flown there next to the national flag and that of our province. This emblem having never been officially defined and in order to avoid individual fantasies the mayor proposes to precisely fix the design and colors of the local flag". In addition to the one flying on the pediment of the town hall, two others were defined and accepted. The first is a "traditional flag, as it appears on the municipal seal used under the Ancien Régime and at the beginning of the revolutionary period, as well as on the coat of arms of our city. Square white banner with the word Illa in blue in the center". The second "a more elaborate flag, with the city's arms embroidered in its center: azure with a square silver banner flying to the sinister. The viscount's crown and the two palms surrounding the shield". These three types of flags were approved by the city council."
Olivier Touzeau, 2 March 2025