Flag of the Azores
Officially Autonomous Region of the Azores
Locally Açores
What the flag looks like
A vertical bicolor of dark blue at the hoist and a wider white field, with a gold goshawk with spread wings beneath an arc of nine gold stars, and the Portuguese shield in the upper hoist.
What it means
The goshawk (açor in Portuguese) gives the islands their name, the nine stars are the nine inhabited islands, and blue and white were the colors of Portugal's constitutional monarchy.
How to remember it
The Azores
is a gold hawk spreading its wings under an arch of nine stars, straddling a blue-and-white split.
Fun facts
- The birds the first settlers took for goshawks were probably common buzzards, but the name Açores stuck.
- Blue and white recall the flag Portugal flew under its constitutional monarchy, a cause the island of Terceira championed in the civil war of 1828 to 1834.
Azores at a glance
- Status
- Autonomous region of Portugal
- Sovereign state
- Portugal
- Islands
- 9 inhabited
- Capital
- Ponta Delgada
- Region
- Autonomous region of Portugal
- Population
- 236,440
- Area
- 2,351 km²
- Languages
- Portuguese
- Currency
- Euro (€)
- Flag adopted
- 1979