Flag of Panama

show This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (May 2013) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 4,555 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Bandera de Panamá]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|es|Bandera de Panamá}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Republic of Panama

Name	Bandera de Panamá
Use	National flag and ensign
Proportion	2:3
Adopted	March 25, 1925; 96 years ago (1925-03-25)
Design	Divided into four rectangles: going clockwise, each quadrant contains a blue star, a red rectangle, a red star, and a blue rectangle.
Variant flag of Republic of Panama
Use	Presidential standard
Design	The national flag with the Coat of arms of Panama charged on the center.

The flag of Panama was made by María de la Ossa de Amador and was officially adopted by the "ley 48 de 1925".^[1] The Panamanian flag day is celebrated on November 4, one day after Panamanian separation from Colombia, and is one of a series of holidays celebrated in November known as the Fiestas Patrias.^[2]

The first flag proposed in 1903 consisted of thirteen horizontal stripes of alternating red and yellow, with a blue canton containing two golden suns, joined by a narrow line to depict the oceans to be united by the Panama Canal (see the depiction below). However, this was not accepted by the Panamanian leader, Manuel Amador Guerrero, whose family designed a new flag.

The stars and quarters are said to stand for the rival political parties, and the white is said to stand for the peace in which they operate. Blue was the color of the Conservatives and red was the color of the Liberals.^[3]

History[]

Bunau-Varilla proposal[]

Reconstruction of the Bunau-Varilla design

Flag of Panama flying from a pole

The wife of Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla designed the first serious proposal for a Panamanian flag.^[4] Bunau-Varilla's design was based on the flag of the United States, possibly on account of that country's hand in Panamanian independence. Retaining the thirteen stripes, she changed the white stripes to yellow, emphasizing the Panamanian connection to Colombia and Spain (whose flags both prominently feature red and yellow). Bunau-Varilla replaced the stars in the blue canton with two interconnected yellow suns; the suns represent North and South America, and are connected because of Panama's position connecting the two continents.^[5] Bunau-Varilla's proposal was rejected by Manuel Amador Guerrero and his fellow revolutionaries because it was too similar to the U.S. flag, and they, therefore, gave the task of designing a flag to Guerrero's son.^{[citation needed]}

María de la Ossa de Amador proposal[]

The original Panamanian flag was made by María de la Ossa de Amador, the first First Lady of Panama, on November 1, 1903. Manuel Amador Guerrero's son, Manuel Encarnación Amador, generally recognized as a skillful drawer, sketched the flag and showed it to María de la Ossa de Amador, who, after much difficulty in avoiding the Colombian army, eventually produced three copies of the flag, with help from her sister-in-law Angélica Bergamonta de la Ossa and niece, María Emilia de la Ossa Bergamonta. All three flags were flown in Panama City upon independence, and distributed widely. The original flag differs from the present flag in that the upper left quadrant was blue. After independence, when blue was chosen as a color of one of the political parties, the quadrants were shifted to make the top left quadrant white.^[6][7]

Description[]

This section does not cite any sources. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The Panamanian government officially described the flag in law on December 15, 1949, as follows:

The Flag of the Republic consists thus of a divided rectangle of four quarters: the upper field close to the pole white with a blue star of five points; the upper field further from the pole, red; the lower field near the pole, blue; and the lower one further from the pole, white with a red star of five points.

This flag was to reflect the political situation of the time:

• The blue was intended to represent the Conservative Party
• The red to represent the Liberal Party.
• The white was intended to stand for peace and purity;
• The blue star stands for the purity and honesty of the life of the country;
• The red star represents the authority and law in the country, and together the stars stand for the new republic.

Historical flags[]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (November 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

• 

  Cross of Burgundy, The first Spanish flag. Used as the flag of the Spanish Empire (1492–1898) and used until 1793.

• 

  , Flag of Spain (1786–1821)

• 

  The third flag of Gran Colombia, between 1821 and 1830.

• 

  Provisional flag of the Republic of New Granada, effective between 1830 and May 9, 1834

• 

  Flag of the Republic of New Granada and the Grenadine Confederation, effective between May 9, 1834 and July 26, 1861.

• 

  Flag of the Panama State, 1855–1863.

• 

  Flag of the Sovereign State of Panama, 1863–1886.

• 

  Flag of the United States of Colombia and the current Republic of Colombia, used from November 26, 1861 until November 3, 1903.

• 

  Original flag design, according to Manuel E. Amador. It was the first flag of Panama, during November 1903.

• 

  Flag of the Panama Canal Zone (1903–1979)

• 

  Current flag of the Republic of Panama: arose from the modification of the first model and began to be used before the oath of December 20, 1903, and ratified among others by Law 64 of 1904.

Source:^{[8][unreliable source?]}

Other flags[]

• 

  Naval jack of Panama

See also[]

• Coat of arms of Panama

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Flags of Panama.

• Flag of Panama at Flags of the World
• Flag of Panama on flagscorner.com