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Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries

Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa, CPLP

by Sammy Kanadi

Members and status of the CPLP
Description of the flag
Variations to the flag

See also:

International Organizations

Other sites:

The website of the CPLP (in Portuguese)

Members and status of the CPLP

As far as I know, there are three official multicontinental entities based on cultural ties: Commonwealth, Francophonie and Lusophonia.
Pierre Gay, 03 Dec 1998

The CPLP was created in 1996, and is still quite underdeveloped relative to the Francophonie and the Commonwealth. It has an Executive Secretary (Marcolino Moco, former prime-minister of Angola), and so far its major achievement was to act as a mediator in the civil war in Guinea-Bissau (along with the CEDEAO). It is a strictly political-diplomatic organization with the promotion of the Portuguese language as its only cultural objective. Members are all the lusophonous countries (Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tome e Príncipe) and East Timor as an observer.

On a flag-related note, there’s a very interesting arrangement of the CPLP symbol and the flags of the member-states at this page.
Jorge Candeias, 03 Dec 1998

Description of the flag

I wrote to the CPLP webmaster regarding their flag and got a reply. Here it is (my translation):

Dear Sir,
Contrarily to what some sources may tell you, the correct version of the flag is the one that has the blue border. So, in a flag with 2 m x 1,40 m, the border has 5 cm, the characters "CPLP" have 10 cm of height and the logo has 60cm of diameter. The characters are 12 cm away from the logo and 21,5 cm away from the bottom border.

Concerning the meaning of the logo, contrarilily to what is commonly believed, it has a meaning: Having the circle as the geometric base, it was decided to divide it in seven equal parts, the same as the number of countries of the CPLP. It was used an element on the shape of a wave, representing the sea, that before the common language, was the element that first united those countries. In the centre of this structure a circle concentric to the structure, represents the union element nowadays — the language.

Yours truly,

Executive Chairmanship of the Commonwealth of Portuguese-Speaking Countries

João Madureira, 15 August 1998

Variations of the flag

Wider border variation

by Jorge Candeias

While the exact specifications of the CPLP flag are those shown above, not all flags are made to these specifications. This variant was made from observed flags.
António Martins-Tuvalkin, 24 Aug 2000

Borderless variation

by Jorge Candeias

Recently the CPLP has been on the news quite frequently, mainly due to the civil war that is going on in Guinea-Bissau. These unfortunate happenings gave rise, as usual, to some flag-sightings on TV, including a surprise: a CPLP flag without border.

The picture I made before was made from a black and white photo, and I made some educated guesses on colours to make it. The flag in the photo has a border very clearly visible. But now on TV, I saw a flag with no border, though the rest is exactly as I depicted it: dimensions and colours.

I saw this arrangement before on the Expo’98 webpages, but I thought it was a(nother) mistake. Obviously it wasn’t, but now I wander: wich is the correct flag? Was the bordered flag an early version of the definitive borderless flag? Why did they make a bad flag even worse by removing the only original feature it had?
Jorge Candeias, 23 Jul 1998

In today’s newspaper Correio da Manhã, there is another photo of a CPLP event with the CPLP flag visible and… it has a border! So it seems they are using the flag with and without the border at the same time. I wonder if there is some protocolar difference in it’s use, but I sincerely doubt it. Here I tend to agree with António when he says (in our private conversations) that it must be due to carelessness.
Jorge Candeias, 04 Aug 1998

Fringed variation with full name

Yet another “version” of the flag appeared yesterday on the news: white with the logo and acronym, plus the words "COMUNIDADE DE PAÍSES / DE LÍNGUA PORTUGUESA" below in two rows and no border. Instead it had a yellow fringe! This was a part of those flag-art graphical designs that have become common in recent years, but had a distinctive photo-look. Another flag in use?!
Jorge Candeias, 21 Aug 1998