Flag of Andorra

An overview

The national flag of Andorra is a vertical tricolor of blue, yellow, and red with the national coat of arms centered on the yellow band. The bands are not quite equal: the yellow is slightly wider, at a ratio of 8:9:8, and the flag as a whole is 7:10.

The design reflects the country’s singular position. Andorra is a co-principality in the Pyrenees whose two heads of state are, to this day, the Catholic bishop of Urgell in Spain and the president of France — and its flag is generally read as joining the blue and red of France with the red and yellow of Spain and Catalonia. The tricolor is said to date from 1866; the 1993 Constitution declared the traditional flag and arms the symbols of the state, and the design was standardized that July, when Andorra joined the United Nations.

A plain version without the arms — the original 1866 design — remains the civil flag, though its near-identity to the flags of Romania and Chad keeps it rarely flown.

The coat of arms

The shield at the flag’s center is Andorra’s history in four quarters: the mitre and crosier of the bishop of Urgell; the three red bars on gold of the count of Foix, whose rights passed in time to the French head of state; the four red bars on gold of Catalonia; and the two red cows of Béarn. The first two quarters are the two co-princes — the arrangement created in 1278, when bishop and count agreed to share jurisdiction over the valleys.

Beneath the shield runs the Latin motto Virtus Unita Fortior — “strength united is stronger.” A centuries-old carving of these arms survives on the wall of the Casa de la Vall, the historic seat of Andorra’s parliament, the General Council.

Design and official specification

The standardized design sets the flag at 7:10 with three vertical bands — blue at the hoist, yellow, red at the fly — in widths of 8:9:8, the wider yellow band carrying the coat of arms. The state flag bears the arms; the civil flag omits them.

Official color specification

The official colors are set out in the “Graphic regulations for reproducing the shield and flag,” issued through the Oficina de Marques del Principat d’Andorra and approved by the Government of Andorra on May 5, 1999. Three Pantone colors define the bands; a fourth, a khaki, appears in the coat of arms.

Symbolism and meaning

No official meaning for the colors is written into law. The standard reading — the one Andorra’s geography makes hard to resist — is that the flag joins the colors of its two protecting neighbors.

The symbolism is embodied rather than decreed: the two co-princes named in the Constitution are the successors of the bishop and the count whose arms share the shield.

How the flag evolved

For a flag of a very old country, the record is surprisingly thin: the tricolor appears in 1866 with no known legal act behind it, drifts between vertical and horizontal for decades, and acquires its arms and exact form only in living memory.

1. 1866

   The tricolor appears

   

   The blue-yellow-red tricolor is said to date from 1866, the year of the New Reform led by Guillem d'Areny-Plandolit — who may be its real creator, though tradition attributes the design to Napoleon III, France's emperor and co-prince. No first legal authority for it is known. That plain tricolor is still Andorra's civil flag today.

2. c. 1900

   Horizontal variants

   

   From the late 19th century into the 1930s the same colors often flew in horizontal stripes — a travel account from 1898 describes a horizontal flag hanging from the parliament during sessions. Why the arrangement varied is not recorded.

3. c. 1939

   Vertical, with the arms

   

   Around 1939 the vertical arrangement returned, now carrying a coat of arms on the yellow band. For decades afterward the flag's details — the arms, the proportions — varied from maker to maker.

4. 1993

   Standardized

   

   Andorra's new Constitution declared the traditional flag and arms the symbols of the state, and the design was standardized in July 1993, when Andorra joined the United Nations. The government's graphic regulations of May 5, 1999, fixed the exact colors.

Who designed the Andorran flag?

No designer is settled. Tradition attributes the tricolor to Napoleon III — emperor of France and, by that office, co-prince of Andorra — with the blue stripe standing for France. Its adoption coincided with the New Reform of 1866, the modernization led by Guillem d’Areny-Plandolit, who may be the flag’s real creator; the reform was approved by the episcopal co-prince, Bishop Josep Caixal i Estradé, that April, and by Napoleon III three years later.

Britannica’s dry verdict stands for the whole early record: the flag is said to date from 1866, but the first legal authority for it is unknown.

Legal status and display rules

The flag’s modern status rests on the Constitution of 1993, approved by referendum on March 14 of that year. Article 2.2 is brief: the national anthem, the state flag, and the coat of arms of Andorra “are the traditional ones.” The design was standardized in July 1993, when Andorra was admitted to the United Nations, and a 1996 law on the use of the signs of the state governs their official use.

The exact reproduction of flag and arms — colors, proportions, artwork — is fixed by the graphic regulations of May 5, 1999. The state flag with the arms is the one flown officially; the plain tricolor remains available as the civil flag.

Things you may not know

The yellow band is wider. Look closely: the bands run 8:9:8, not equal thirds. The slightly broader middle band makes room for the coat of arms — and it is one of the quickest ways to tell Andorra’s flag from Romania’s or Chad’s.

Two flags in the world carry cattle. The red cows of Béarn make Andorra one of only two national flags to portray cattle — the other is Moldova’s, whose arms carry an aurochs head and whose flag is Andorra’s closest look-alike.

Its heads of state are on the shield. The bishop’s mitre and the count’s bars in the arms aren’t just history — the bishop of Urgell and the successor to the count’s rights, the president of France, are Andorra’s co-princes today, an arrangement dating to 1278.