Last modified: 2005-01-08 by juan manuel gabino villascán
Keywords: mexico | guadalajara | jalisco | coat of arms | unofficial flag |
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by Juan Manuel Gabino Villascán, October 06, 2001. |
Guadalajara is a city located West of Mexico in the Atemajac valley,
between the Sierra Madre Occidental, the Pacific coast, and the
Chapala lowlands.
Guadalajara is the header of the the same-named municipality and
at the same time, the capital city of the State of
Jalisco.
It is an important cultural and administrative center founded in 1532
by Spaniard Nuño de Guzmán.
It main industries are fur, chemical, textile, automotive, among others.
Juan Manuel Gabino Villascán, October 06, 2001.
From Flag Report 13,
by Jaume Ollé
May 9, 2001
The first news of the existence of a flag in the state of Jalisco came to me through a young Mexican vexillologist who gave me the colours and said me that the flag could be seen in Guadalajara quite often. Nevertheless, I believe, that contradictory news were mixed, on the one hand the existence of a flag project with blue and yellow colours and on the other hand the exhibition of a flag with these colours as local flag of the city of Guadalajara, that apparently was based on the supposed colours of the Kingdom of Nueva Galicia.
In my last trip to Guadalajara I found that the city has a flag for its own as already reported by Mr. Jaume Ollé in Flag Report 13. Unfortunately I could not find any legal statement about it. The flag is divided horizontally into three stripes: blue, yellow (gold), blue. The yellow stripe fills 50% of the flag. The coat of arms in the center. The are variants (specially "desk of table flags" and pennants showing equal-sized stripes).
At the headquarters (main building), there were not flags, but, in the central yard were hanging from the balcony pennants like this:
by Juan Manuel Gabino Villascán.
While at other building, called "delegación municipal", the flag, as shown a top of this page, is flown a top of it. At the same building (delegación), I was allowed to enter the meeting-room where there is another flag, this is used in local civic ceremonies.
Juan Manuel Gabino Villascán, December 08, 2004.
The coat of arms consists of an "Iberian" shield (round
pointed with parallel sides and flat top), azure, two lions or holding a
tree in natural colors, and tressure or charged with seven saltires gules.
Helm argent, crowned with a red burgee (?) charged with a cross potent (?)
or, mantled of the first. In the web there is a
pseudo 3D image showing a slightly different version, with border instead
of tressure, but I guess this is an simplification error.
António Martins, 22 Jun 1999
This coat of arms was given to
the City of Guadalajara by Royal
decree of H.M. King Carlos V in 1542,
the year the city was founded. Truly
unprecedented, as it was not in the
policy of the Crown to give Coats of
Arms to cities in the New World, it
was done probably because rather than
being a conquered city, it was one
that was founded anew by and for
Spaniards. We can see in the centre,
a tree with two lions climbing it.
Does this look familiar? Yes, it
resembles the coat of arms of
Madrid.
Yet, rather than a single bear
climbing up a tree, we see two lions.
This is no surprise, as the New World
was colonized out of Andalucía. And
just like the Andalusian dialect was
the one taken to the New World, so it
was shown in the influence of this
Coat of Arms, as
Andalucía's
has two lions, those were put in place
of the bear. Thus, we can see the
influence of both Castilla and
Andalucía in Guadalajara.
Jesus Aceves, 14 Nov 1998
It is remarkable that the Guadalajara and the Jalisco coat of arms are not exactly the same though both of them keep the same elements. The differences could be found in:
Such differences are not a casuality but deliberated in order to distinguish one from another.
Juan Manuel Gabino Villascán, October 06, 2001.