flag of Portugal

The national flag of the Portuguese Republic, often referred to as the Portuguese flag, consists of a rectangular bicolour with a field divided into green on the hoist, and red on the fly. The version without laurels of the country’s national coat of arms stands in the middle of the Portuguese armillary sphere and shield, centered over the colour boundary at equal distance. The flag was announced in 1910, following the 5 October 1910 revolution, inspired by the colours of the Republican Party and the design of radical conspiratorial society the Carbonária.

Its presentation was done on 1 December 1910, after the downfall of the constitutional monarchy on 5 October 1910. However, the official decree approving this flag as the official flag was published on 30 June 1911. This new national flag for the First Portuguese Republic was selected by a special commission whose members included Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, João Chagas and Abel Botelho. The conjugation of the new field colour, especially the use of green, was not traditional in the Portuguese national flag's composition and represented a radical republican-inspired change that broke the bond with the former monarchical flag. Since a failed republican insurrection on 31 January 1891, red and green had been established as the colours of the Portuguese Republican Party and its associated movements, whose political prominence kept growing until its culmination following the Republican revolution of 5 October 1910. In the ensuing decades, these colours were popularly propagandised. Green represented the hope of the nation and the colour red represented the blood of those who died defending it; this happened to endow the colours with a more patriotic and dignified, therefore less political, sentiment.