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Guanacaste Province (Costa Rica)

Provincia de Guanacaste

Last modified: 2006-02-18 by dov gutterman
Keywords: costa rica | guanacaste | tree |
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image by Jaume Olle', 28 October 2002



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Overview

I visited Costa Rica in November 2000. I made only one observation of a flag I did not know. This was the flag of Guanacaste province. It is shaped like the Palestinian flag. It has blue insted of black, but I cannot now remember whether the top or bottom stripe was blue.
Jan Oskar Engene, 24 January 2001

I receive this flag from three sources so I believe that above is the correct flag. Guanacaste is a region diferenciate from the rest of Costa Rica. It was part of Nicaragua during spanish domain and joined Costa Rica after the independence.
Jaume Olle', 27 January 2001

Guanacaste flag has the blue stripe upwards and the green one downwards. So it is blue, white and green with a red triangle on the stem. Thus it is exactly like the Palestinian flag when you replace black by blue.
Bernard Monot, French Embassy in San Jose, 28 October 2002

Some details about Guanacaste flag were published in Flag report 15. The flag takes the colors of Costa Rica (red, blue and white) and adds the green for the province's Pampas. It was created by mid seventies in a contest held by the provincial government. Guanacaste is a territory incorporated to Costa Rica on 25 July 1824 and until then it belonged to Nicaragua, and therefore it has a differentiated personality. In a letter of Lic. Marco Tulio Gardela he describes this flag with three horizontal stripes: blue, white and green, with the red triangle at the hoist, but the Mayor of Liberia Mr Hugo Zuņiga sent to the Argentine vexillologist Lic. Mr. Bacchi a photocopy of a drawing with the stripes inverted, though it could be just that it was photocopied upside down.
Gardela indicates that the red triangle stand for the heart of the Guanacastecans, their fondness and happiness, their courage and manliness shown in many occasions; blue is for the province's transparent sky; white is a sapphire mantle in the province's fertility and peace. green is the provincial emblem for the Guanacaste tree, the pasture, the crops, the work of the peasant and the cattleman.  
Jaume Olle', 28 October 2002


Variant


image by Jaume Olle', 28 October 2002

Some variants are in use. At time of the edition of Flag Report, a vriant flag in use featured a blue, white, green flag (5:2:5) with triangle only in the narrow white stripe, similar to the argentinian provincial flag called "bandera del pico". Later I checked with several people that enforcment of legislation about flag is not very rigid in Costa Rica, and frequently variations are issued (this one must be the work of some unrespectful manufacturer)
Jaume Olle', 28 October 2002


Coat of Arms


image by Jaume Olle', 28 October 2002

The provincial arms contain the Guanacaste tree, that is the national tree. The legend of the ribbon says "de la patria por nuestra voluntad" (of the fatherland by our will) and refers to the voluntary union of the district to Costa Rica in 1824, after having belonged to the intendency of Nicaragua.
Jaume Olle', 28 October 2002