Ecuador

Last modified: 1997-11-13 by herman de wael
Keywords: ecuador | america |
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by mark sensen

• Provincial Flags
• Galápagos

See also:

• Gran Colombia for the colors

Provincial Flags

I've been trying to find out someting on the flags of the provinces of Ecuador. The data is quite insecure, and I seem to have problems even with the numbers of provinces. My Encyclopedia from 1969 claims that there are 17, W.Smith has 19 and my atlas also from 1969 (! and from the same publishing house) that there are 19. All of them agree that there is additionally one territory - Galapagos Islands or Achipelago Colon, as they call it. Since Ecuador has a quite unstable history, this is certanly due to it. Even the flags of the provinces are not the same in all sources. W. Smith gives 19 flags, but 11 of them he gives as uncertain. Jaume Olle has on his pages 13 provincial flags, but with one exception (Guayas) all are different from Smith's images.
(ed. note : Since then, one additional province (Sucumbíos) has been added, and Galápagos has also been named a province, so that there are now 21 provinces in 4 regions - EB Yb)

One more thing, W.Smith claims (but doesn't gives an image) that there is a special flag used on provincial government buildings, that have a ring of stars. How many stars there are? Is Galapagos included? What kind of stars they are? White fivepointed seems to be natural conclusion. But are they pointed up, as on Eur.Union flag or outwards as on Cook Islands? And are they all in the blue field, like in Venezuelan flag?

Zeljko Heimer - 1996-07-15

Jaume Ollé has now sent the correct flags

List of Regions and Provinces (with ISO-3166-2 code)

• Amazonica (until 1990 called Oriente)
  • (S) Morona-Santiago
  • (N) Napo
  • (Y) Pastaza
  • (U) Sucumbíos
  • (Z) Zamora-Chinchipe
• Costa
  • (O) El Oro
  • (E) Esmeraldas
  • (G) Guayas
  • (R) Los Ríos
  • (M) Manabí
• Insular
  • (W) Galápagos
• Sierra
  • (A) Azuay
  • (B) Bolívar
  • (F) Cañar
  • (C) Carchi
  • (H) Chimborazo
  • (X) Cotopaxi
  • (I) Imbabura
  • (L) Loja
  • (P) Pichincha
  • (T) Tungurahua

Editor's Note on the Provincial Flags of Ecuador

There has been a lot of confusion surrounding these flags.

Even W. Smith apparantly reports wrong designs.

Jaume Olle reports :

The provincial flag history of Ecuador is very complicated because there exists in each province dozens of district flags (many of them similar to the provincial one) and many times the sources (generally not expert vexillolists) are wrong. Only when the colombian vexilloligist Restrepo Uribe went to Ecuador (where he currently lives) is became possible to know the exact design of the provincial flags and shields.
I edited two years ago some pages in spanish with this explanation, but Zeljko Heimer read it and did not understand, and redrew the images and posted them to the list as if they were correct. Mario explained recently the possibility that one proposal was confused with an official design, and the flags of my pages were pending confirmation from the people, and they were not sure (this warning was unfortunately only in spanish).
The flags posted existed probably nearly all (one or two at least are surely wrong), but they are of undetermined districts.

The various pages show the provincial flags as reported by Jaume, as well as those previously erroneously reported flags.

Herman De Wael - 1997-11-12