Flag of Portugal

The flag of Portugal consists of a rectangle vertically divided into green, at the hoist, and red, at the fly, with the minor version of the national coat of arms (armillary sphere and Portuguese shield) centered over the boundary between the colors. It was officially adopted on 30 June 1911, replacing the flag used under the constitutional monarchy, after it was chosen among several proposals by a special commission, whose members included Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, João Chagas and Abel Botelho.

The new background colors, especially the green, were not traditional and represented a radical republican-inspired change that broke the bond with the former religious monarchical flag. Since a failed republican insurrection in 31 January 1891, the red and green had been established as the colors of the Portuguese Republican Party and its associated movements, whose political prominence kept growing until it culminated in the Republican revolution of 5 October 1910. In the following decades, these colors were popularly propagandized as representing the hope of the nation (green) and the blood (red) of those who died defending it, as a means to endow them with a more patriotic and dignified, therefore less political, sentiment.

The current flag represents a sweeping change in the evolution of the Portuguese flag, which was always intimately associated with the royal arms. Since the country's foundation, the national flag developed from King Afonso I's blue-cross-on-white armorial square banner to the liberal monarchy's royal arms over a blue-and-white rectangle. In between, major changes associated with important political events contributed to the evolution of the national shield into its current design.