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Urueñas (Municipality, Castilla y León, Spain)

Last modified: 2019-01-13 by ivan sache
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Presentation of Urueñas

The municipality of Urueñas (105 inhabitants in 2010; 3,287 ha) is located in the north-east of the Province of Segovia, 70 km from Segovia.

Urueñas seems to have been resettled by colonists from Urueña (Province of Valladolid), then the seat of a big fortress. The name of the two villages probably comes from a pre-Roman toponym meaning "underground water", ur meaning "water" in Basque. In the Middle Ages, the village belonged to the Community of the Village and Land of Sepúlveda. Urueñas was described by Camilo José Cela in his book Judíos, Moros y Cristianos (1956).

Ivan Sache, 13 May 2011


Symbols of Urueñas

The flag and arms of Urueñas are prescribed by a Decree adopted on 20 September 1994 by the Segovia Provincial Government, signed on 26 September 1994 by the President of the Government, and published on 6 October 1994 in the official gazette of Castilla y León, No. 194 (text).
The symbols are described as follows:

Flag: Quadrangular flag, yellow, with three blue wavy fesses.
Coat of arms: Quarterly, 1. Azure a bell-gable argent, 2. Or an oak eradicated vert, 3. Or an ewe argent on rocks, 4. Argent wavy azure. The shield surmounted with a Royal Spanish crown. Per pale (?).

The symbols were designed by Manuel María Rodriguez de Maribona y Dávila, Treasurer of the Royal Academy of Heraldry and Genealogy. The quarters of the shield represent the parish church, the woods, the Community of the Village and Land of Sepúlveda, and water for which the village is named.

The Royal Academy of History turned down the proposed coat of arms, made of four quarters and, therefore, unnecessarily complicated, although some insist that such a division is mandatory. The 1st quarter features the realistic representation of the bell-gable of the parish church, which is not acceptable for reasons already explained several times. The 4th quarter features waves said to represent the more than improbable etymology of the village's name.
The proposed flag cannot be accepted either. When a flag features elements of the coat of arms, its design should stick to the arms' design. Here the proposed flag solely recalls the 4th quarter of the coat of arms, which refers to a dubious etymology.
[Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1997, 194, 1: 195]

Ivan Sache, 14 March 2015