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Agualva-Cacém Commune (Sintra Municipality, Portugal)

image by António Martins, 06 Mar 1998

About the flag
Presentation of Agualva-Cacém
Other flags

See also:

About the flag

This flag is quartered yellow over blue, charged in the center with a round pointed shield — blue, a bridge gold on a fess wavy argent and blue, under two windmill wheels, sailed argent and “roped” gold, in chief, a bishop tiara argent lined red.

The colors of the flag are illegal, for blue is the shield background color (and the rules say that colors of the charges of the coat of arms should be used) and yellow touches the edge of the shield. I’d bet that when (soon enough) Agualva-Cacém become an “independent” municipality (independent from Sintra, that is) , new colors will be issued for this flag, and these will be red and white (also to prevent neighbouring municipalities to have the same colors, since Sintra is also yellow and blue). The putative new municipality will probably encompass only the current commune (itself scheduled to be divided into 3 or 4 new communes), so the current municipal flag is likely to be retainded in the new status. All this would cause the eastern part of Sintra municipality (Queluz) also to “seceed” (or to become an unlikely enclave).
António Martins, 06 Mar 1998

Presentation of Agualva-Cacém

Cacém was till 1940 a small village some 20 km away from Lisbon, of no importance whatsoever apart from being a major railway junction, midway between the capital and the prestigeous banlieu of Sintra (of Lord Byron’s «glourious Eden of Sintra» fame), whose municipality this village is part of. Then industrialization and rural exodus came to Portugal and a lot of small villages near Lisbon boomed into cheap and unplanned housing for thousands of people. In less than 15 years Cacém become Europe’s most populated commune (comparison makes sense only against countries with simillary small civil divisions). In that process, the two neighbouring villages of Agualva and Cacém merged together, and eventually a hybrid commune arose, called "Agualva - Cacém" — for none of both “belongs” to the other. Needless to say, it is an awful place, sharing neither the beauties of the countryside, nor the cultural richness of a real city, being only a “dormitory” town of people that work in Lisbon all day. However, it does have a nice coat of arms, and flag, also.
António Martins, 06 Mar 1998

Other flags

Clube «Unidos do Cacém»

by António Martins, 06 Mar 1998 |

This rises from the logo-on-bedsheet monotony and is quite a flag attaction of Cacém: The local sport and hobby association, CUC - Clube "Unidos do Cacém", flies a black and yellow flag, per saltire a saltire conterchanged; over all, the club’s logo simple enough to “pass” the dull flag test. This image shows the reverse, nota bene, for the obverse has not only lettering on it (full name and founding date — just like Oregon!), but also somewhat different measures, due to sewing technique, I’d say…
António Martins, 06 Mar 1998