Country profile: Spain

The current flag was born of a very practical problem at sea. In 1785, King Charles III noticed that Spain's white naval ensign, bearing the royal coat of arms, was easily confused at a distance with those of other powers that also used a white field, such as France or the Kingdom of Naples, making it hard to tell allied ships from enemy ones in the heat of battle.

The king commissioned his naval minister, Antonio Valdés y Bazán, to draw up a dozen designs that would be easier to distinguish from far away. Among the proposals, Charles III chose the one with three horizontal stripes, red, yellow and red, with the central yellow stripe twice as wide as the other two to maximise visual contrast at sea, including in fog or through the smoke of cannon fire.

Reserved at first for the navy, this design gradually became the national flag over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before being enshrined by the Spanish Constitution of 1978.

Contrary to a common belief, the choice of red and yellow rests on no official symbolism: it was, above all, a practical response to a need for visibility at sea, decided by Charles III in 1785. A popular historical reading nonetheless sees in it an echo of the colours of the old kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, from which modern Spain emerged.

The official version of the flag, used by the state, carries the national coat of arms at its centre; a simpler version without the arms serves as the civil ensign for private use.

The red-yellow-red flag of 1785 is one of the oldest national flags still in use today, predating by several years the French tricolour born of the Revolution.

The central yellow stripe is not twice as wide by accident: this proportion, personally approved by Charles III among twelve designs submitted by his minister Antonio Valdés y Bazán, was chosen specifically to set Spanish ships apart from the largely white ensigns of France, Naples or Sicily.

During the Second Spanish Republic, between 1931 and 1939, the red-yellow-red flag was temporarily replaced by a red-yellow-purple tricolor, the third colour historically associated with medieval Castile; the Franco regime later restored the traditional red-yellow-red flag.