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Aljustrel Municipality (Portugal)

Concelho de Aljustrel, Distrito de Beja

2:3 image by Sérgio Horta,

About the Flag
Version without Coat of Arms
Presentation of Aljustrel

See also:

External links:

Page about Aljustrel at the Portuguese Municipalities’s Association website (incl. image of the arms)
reported by António Martins, 18 Nov 2001

About the Flag

It is a fairly typical Portuguese municipal flag, with the coat of arms centred on a field quartered of purple over white. My sources show the flag with a reddish purple, but this is not indicated in the decree that established it.

Jorge Candeias, 16 May 1998

Coat of arms

image by Sérgio Horta,

The coat of arms has a 4-towered mural crown, a typical scroll that reads "VILA DE ALJUSTREL" and the shield is black charged with a fountain and in chief a golden crescent facing upwards, sided by two purple crosses of the Santiago Order. A more recent source shows these arms with a thin white border around the shield and a different shape of the fountain.
Meaning:
Guessing the meaning of the coat of arms, I’d say that this territory was attributed to the Order of Santiago after it’s conquest to the moors (an educated guess, since most of the territory in today’s southern Portugal was at that feudal times attributed to this or that order). The crescent reflects the Moorish inheritage, and the fountain relates perhaps to some thermal location. This is a total guess, because I am not aware of any thermal places in Aljustrel. However, fountains in Portuguese heraldry usually refer to that, and there are a number of springs in the municipality’s territory, so I may not be too wrong.
Jorge Candeias, 16 May 1998

Flag and arms adopted and published in Diário do Governo : I Série on 28 November 1939
Sérgio Horta, 16 May 1998

Version without Coat of Arms

2:3 image by António Martins-Tuválkin, Apr 2010

Presentation of Aljustrel

Aljustrel is a town that belongs to the district of Beja, old province of Baixo Alentejo. The municipality has 455,7 km² of area and about 11 800 inhabitants in 5 communes. It is a very poor municipality, with an economy based in agriculture and mining industries, although these are facing a huge crisis right now, thus there is a lot of unemployement there.
Jorge Candeias, 16 May 1998

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