Country profile: Argentina

The Argentine flag was created by Manuel Belgrano, one of the heroes of independence. On 27 February 1812, he raised it for the first time in Rosario, on the banks of the Paraná, using the sky blue and white of the national cockade, adopted a few days earlier.

The Congress of Tucumán, which proclaimed the independence of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata on 9 July 1816, officially adopted the flag on 20 July 1816. The Sun of May was added to the centre of the white stripe in 1818.

The flag consists of three horizontal stripes, sky blue, white and sky blue. 20 June, the anniversary of Manuel Belgrano's death in 1820, is Flag Day in Argentina.

The exact origin of the colours of the Argentine flag remains a matter of debate. The most widespread interpretations are as follows:

• Sky blue and white: according to the popular reading, they represent the sky and the clouds. Another theory links them to the colours of the Spanish Order of Charles III, or to the mantle of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception.
• Sun of May: it recalls the May Revolution of 1810, which paved the way for independence. It also evokes Inti, the Inca sun god.

According to tradition, the sun broke through the clouds over Buenos Aires on 25 May 1810, the day the first self-governing junta was formed.

In Rosario, the National Flag Memorial, inaugurated in 1957 on the banks of the Paraná, marks the spot where Manuel Belgrano first raised the flag.

In 1818, the French-born privateer Hippolyte Bouchard, in the service of the United Provinces, seized Monterey, then the capital of Spanish California, for a few days: the Argentine flag briefly flew on the Pacific coast of North America.

The flag of Uruguay also bears a Sun of May, and the flags of several Central American countries (Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador) feature blue and white stripes, whose origin is often traced back to the Argentine example.