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Ribeira Grande Municipality (Portugal)

image by António Martins, 21 Mar 1999

About the flag
Presentation of Ribeira Grande

See also:

Other sites:

Page about the municipal flag and coat of arms of Ribeira Grande at Sérgio Horta’s website (in Portuguese).
reported by Jorge Candeias, 29 Feb 1999
Page about Ribeira Grande at the Portuguese Municipalities’s Association website (incl. image of the arms)
reported by António Martins, 18 Nov 2001

About the flag

It is a quite typical portuguese municipal flag, with the coat of arms centered on a background gyronny (meaning city rank) of blue and white. The coat of arms is gules, a three arched masonry bridge argent, lined sable and shadowed azure, by a river of three wavy fesses, argent and azure, and under a five pointed star or, and a dove (or a goshawk?) of the same, holding an eschuteon charged with a saltire of five white bezants. Mural crown argent with five visible towers (city rank) and white scroll reading in black upper case letters "RIBEIRA GRANDE".
António Martins, 21 Mar 1999

The name means "Large Creek" and that is certainly the one represented in the azure-argent wavy fesses of the coat of arms (in portuguese heraldry, the sea is rather vert and argent). The bridge is pretty obvious.
António Martins, 21 Mar 1999

The bird simply means that the municipality belongs to the Azores islands — in the images of the arms I have, there's little to no difference between this bird and most of the other hawks in the azorean municipal arms.
Jorge Candeias, 24 Mar 1999

Presentation of Ribeira Grande

Ribeira Grande municipality had 27 620 inhabitants in 1990 (3rd largest in Azores), and is divided in 14 communes, covering 180 km². It's situated in the island of São Miguel and belongs to the Autonomous Region of Azores (old province of the same name) and to the old District of Ponta Delgada.
António Martins, 21 Mar 1999