Last modified: 2006-02-05 by antonio martins
Keywords: vizela | coat of arms | bridge: 3 arches | minerva | escutcheon: portugal ancien | autonomist |
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Yesterday, the portuguese parlament created a new municipality: Vizela.
This puts the number of municipalities in 306.
Jorge Candeias, 20 Mar 1998
This municipality (along with some 800 others) existed until mid 19th
century, when a major reform took place.
Unlike most of those, the vizelans kept always alive a strong movement
favouring the re-establishment of theyer municipality. The newly approved
municipality of Vizela will consist mostly of communes dettached from the
Guimarães municipality, and also some from Felgueiras and Lousada. The
officialization will happen not before mid May, together with other new
municipalities.
António Martins, 02 Apr 1998
The flag of the new municipality, in use for a long time now, but still not
official is a gironny flag of blue over yellow. The flag, as always, has the
arms of the municipality in the centre. This coat of arms, also not official
yet, has a silver field with a bridge at the bottom, a saint in the centre and
two very long white shields (one on each side of the saint) each with five
quinas inside.
Jorge Candeias, 20 March 1998
Yesterday, there was a huge display of these flags, both in Lisbon and in
Vizela to celebrate the recreation of the municipality.
Jorge Candeias, 20 Mar 1998
There was another motive for rejoycement: Not only the municipality was
(re)created but also the municipality-to-be seat status was upgraded to that
of city. Formerly it was a town — and locals more than once have rejected the
upgrading: "No municipality, no city!" (Sem concelho não há cidade!).
City flags have 5-tower mural crowns and gyronny
fields, while town flags have only 4 and
quartered fileds. However unnoficial flags of Vizela are (and as far as I know
always were) gyronny, but towers vary, as also the scroll inscription:
"CIDADE DE VIZELA",
"VILA DE VIZELA" or
"CONCELHO DE VIZELA" (respectively: "city", "town" and
"municipality").
António Martins, 2 Apr 1998
In August, the municipality was officially created and an installation
comission was nominated. It was another opportunity to see the flag they
are using (not official yet, though), since they partied again in both
Lisbon and Vizela.
Jorge Candeias, 22 Sep 1998
[At the municipality refoundation celebrations] there was also another flag in
display: a diagonally quartered flag of yellow and blue (yellow in the hoist and
fly and blue in the top and bottom), with a thin white bordering and the words
"CONCELHO | DE | VIZELA" in white in the blue triangles
("concelho de" in the one at the top and "Vizela" in the one at the bottom).
Jorge Candeias, 20 Mar 1998
A really ugly one, if I may say so. Overall ratio was about 4:5. I didn’t see
this one before, and I believe (and hope!) it was not a serious proposal.
António Martins, 02 April 1998
