Saturday, December 10, 2011

Flags of Independent Sicily and Balearic Islands

Flag of Balearic Islands
Islands of Spain in the Mediterranean

In the Western Mediterranean Sea are the two distinguished islands of Italy and Spain - Sicily and the Balearic Islands.

They are virtual mulatto worlds in between Africa and Europe. Their histories follow a similar rhythm. Their initial written histories begin as colonies from Asia - namely the Phoenicians and Greeks. Eventually they became important bases for the Roman Empire. For a while they were colonies to Islamic States and teetered between the Christian and Islamic Worlds.

Flag of Independent Sicily - modern era
Island of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea

The modern flag of the Balearic Islands uses the colours and some of the patterns of the Catalan Nationalist movements within Spain. The colours of the Balearic flag are red, yellow, purple and white.

To the right is/was a popular flag for the Sicilian Independent movement after and during WWII. This pro-independence political party was popular from up until 1951. Coincidentally the modern flag of the Balearic Islands has a similar structure and colour theme.

Both flags match with a nine striped field -4 red and 5 yellow stripes. The canton of the Independent Sicily banner is a square with the three legged head of Medusa in yellow, while the Balearic Island's Flag has rectangular purple canton with a white castle.

The flags of these Western Mediterranean Sea Isles are united by a pattern and similar story arc of history. Both differ in speech from standard mainland Italian and Spanish. They are parallel lands with crisscrossing stories. They are wing-men to each other, of the Western Mediterranean.

Flags of Sicily and Balearic Islands

2 comments:

  1. The four red stripes on yellow denote a common thread which is not Asian, or Roman. They were both part of the Kingdom of Aragon during part of their history and they were conquered by Catalan and Aragonese troops.....

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Balearic flag doesn't use the "Catalan nationalist colours"...that is a modern concept. They are just the colours of Aragon kingdom's flag which are also used by its subregions: Valencia, Catalonia, Perpignan, etc, etc

    ReplyDelete