These are the exact colors and design pattern of the Flag and Coat of Arms of Spain

@ElentirENG ES 8·05·2020 · 22:45 0

I am a graphic designer and I have made many designs that included the Spanish Flag. When doing so, and especially when dealing with printers, a problem usually arises.

Cross of Burgundy: origin and history of the oldest of the flags of Spain

The definition of the Flag of Spain in the 1978 Constitution

The colors and proportions of the stripes of the Flag of Spain are defined in Article 4.1 of the Constitution: "The flag of Spain is made up of three horizontal stripes, red, yellow and red, with the yellow twice as wide as each of the red ones." For any ordinary citizen this is already the case, but any graphic designer will observe that data is missing. And the thing is that there are different types of red and yellow, and the proportions of the flag are not indicated either.

The official proportions of the Flag of Spain

For those who are not versed in vexillology, it must be said that not all national flags have the same proportions. For example, the flag of the United States has a ratio of 10:19 (that is, if the flag measures 190 cm long, it must measure 100 cm high). The flags of France, Italy and Portugal have a ratio of 2:3 (that is, a flag 120 cm long will have to be 80 cm high). Germany is 3:5, Ireland and the United Kingdom are 1:2, Poland and Sweden are 5:8, Norway is 8:11, Denmark is 28 :37...

In the case of Spain, Royal Decree 1511/1977, of January 21, which approves the Regulation of Flags and Standards, Scripts, Insignia and Distinctives indicates for the National Flag a proportion of 2 :3, that is, like those of France, Italy and Portugal. This standard was updated after the approval of Royal Decree 2964/1981, establishing the official model of the current Shield of Spain. The official proportions of the Flag of Spain are the following:

So, if you have to design a Flag of Spain that is 120 cm long, the height will have to be 80 cm. If you are asked to design a fabric patch with the National Flag that is 10 cm long, The height must be 6.6 cm. These proportions are valid for the Flag with and without Shield.

The reason why the Coat of Arms of Spain is placed on the left

On the other hand, the aforementioned Royal Decree 1511/1977 also states: "The placement of the coat of arms is centered on the yellow stripe, at a distance from the sheath of half the width of the flag and a size of two thirds of it." The reason why the Coat of Arms is placed offset to the left of the Flag - where the mast or halyard is located - is so that it is more visible when it flies. Thus Well, the Spanish flags that you see with the shield located horizontally in the center of the flag are incorrect.

The official colors of the Flag of Spain

Now we run into another problem: colors. The aforementioned Royal Decree 1511/1977 is very precise even to indicate the fabrics with which the official flags must be made: "Silk taffeta with the shield embroidered in silk, silver and hoop (combat flags) and in strong fabric, made of wool or synthetic fiber, with the coat of arms printed or superimposed." However, it does not indicate the exact colors of the Flag and the Shield. The colors of the Flag were defined in the Royal Decree 441/1981 for two systems. These are the official colors for the CIELAB International System (also known as Lab):

The Royal Decree also indicates: "Tolerance: Five CIELAB Units". And these are the official colors for the CIE 1931 International System with Illuminant C:

The problem with Royal Decree 441/1981 is that the official values ​​for systems as common today as Pantone, CMYK, RGB and Hexadecimal (web colors) do not appear. Thus, many designers have to settle for applying approximate colors. In the Spanish edition of Wikipedia they indicate approximate colors for RGB, CMYK and Hexadecimal, warning that they are not official values. The point is: where do the public administrations themselves get these values?

Trying to resolve that question, I delved into the typical tangle that one finds when entering the field of public administrations. In 1999, an Image Manual was approved Institutional of the General Administration of the State. Many subsequent standards have modified it and refer to it, but finding it on the Internet is almost as easy as finding life on Mars. When it seems like I'm finally going to get it, I come across a broken link, an official website that doesn't work or has expired certificates. It's exasperating.

Not being able to find the famous manual, I came to the Communication Guide Digital for the General State Administration in the so-called Electronic Administration Portal of the Government of Spain. At the rate at which the official websites change, I wonder how long it will take for that link to be broken... Fascicle 2 of that Guide is titled "Institutional image" (see PDF). In case it disappears, I have also posted it here. This issue contains the following official colors for the Flag of Spain of the official Government logos with RGB and process colors (CMYK) (click on the image to see it enlarged):

As you can see, the indicated values ​​coincide with those on Wikipedia. I indicate them here in table format. First the RGB values:

And here the values ​​for four-color (CMYK):

The aforementioned Guide does not include the values ​​for Hexadecimal (web color), but given that the Guide accepts the colors indicated in Wikipedia as good, it would be logical that they were the same values ​​shown in that digital encyclopedia:

As for Pantone colors, I have not found any official document that indicates them. Wikipedia doesn't list them either, and personally I don't dare to do conversions with the Pantone search engine, since the results don't convince me at all. In any case, in some work I have done the values ​​193C (for red) and 116C (for yellow) have been used in printing and they have turned out very well.

The design and colors of the Coat of Arms of Spain

As for the current Coat of Arms of Spain, it was defined heraldically in the Law 33/1981. This law indicates the heraldic colors (azure, gules, gold, etc.) and not the values ​​in the color systems used today. The official model of the Shield was published in Royal Decree 2964/1981. In the image manual of the Spanish Tourism Institute (see PDF; just in case, I leave a copy here) the design of the shield appears with its geometric construction, which I found very interesting:

Likewise, the aforementioned document shows the following representation of the Shield of Spain with its corresponding colors:

The official colors of the shield were established in Royal Decree 2267/1982, once again indicating only the values ​​for CIELAB and CIE-1931. Here we can see the CIELAB equivalences of the heraldic colors indicated by that Royal Decree:

Here we have the values ​​for the CIE-1931 System:

In the aforementioned State Institutional Image Guide however, eight colors are indicated to represent the Shield from Spain, both in RGB and in four-colour and Pantone. The RGB colors are these:

And these would be the values ​​for four-color (CMYK):

Finally, the aforementioned Guide includes the Pantone values ​​for the Shield of Spain: