Netherlands [football]

Every time world turn its eyes to football (also known as soccer in North America), some questions arise: "Why Italy use blue?", "Why the Netherlands use orange?", etc. As the Netherlands are still alive in competition, I'll focus today on them.

The Netherlands use orange on his home jersey, and on the official KVVB (Royal Dutch Football Association) online shop, you can find a supporter flags similar to the image below. So, why the orange?

The answer is: this is the color of the House of Orange-Nassau, the royal house of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Although the Princes of Orange seems to have used the orange fruit as one of their symbols, orange was, curiously, the livery color of the House of Nassau. The original flag of Netherlands was orange-white-blue, but the first was gradually substituted by red along the years.

Several members of the House of Nassau appears on portraits with a orange bend, like this, representing Henry Casimir I of Nassau-Dietz, painted by Wybrand de Geest:

With the foundation of the House of Orange-Nassau, the orange color became a symbol of Dutch royal house. On the royal birthdays, for example, the national flag should fly with a orange pennant above, as a sign of allegiance:

With time, orange was turning from a royal color to a national color, and became a symbol of Dutch pride. Its use was specially remarkable during WW2, when the country was occupied by the Nazi.

You can return watching the World Cup now... Comments are welcome!

León (Spain)

In many posts from this blog, I've written about flags inspired by coats of arms. On this review, we'll look how curious can be the opposite phenomenon: a coat of arms based on a flag!

The kingdom of León's name comes from "legion", but the pun with "lion" was quickly noticed. While many European kingdoms were fughting the Crusades, the kingdom was fighting against the Moors in its own homeland. For use on the battlefields, the legions used a flag with a purple lion passant on white or light gray cloth, something like this:


As the use of the purple lion by León (first half of 12th century) predates the adoption of the fleurs-de-lis by France, lions by England and the pales by Aragon/Catalonia, it may be, possibly, the oldest royal symbol documented.

With the birth of heraldry, the purple lion would, naturally, fill a coat of arms. And here comes the most interesting part of this story! According to a study by Ricardo Chao Prieto, the Mediaeval idea of horror vacui ("fear of the empty") made the lion passant be rotated 90º degrees, what eventually made it a lion rampant. Look at the image:


Prieto's thesis has some merit: while the lion passant roughly feels one third of the escutcheon, the lion rampant occupies the full shield; England addopting three lions passant guardant may not be coincidence. And, although it may sound unintuitive, a lion rampant looks a lot like a lion passant rotated.

Currently, the flags most commonly used by Leonese nationalists have the coat of arms (the one with the, usually crowned, lion rampant) in a purple or crimson background. This flag arrangement wasn't used during Middle Ages, what points to a more recent origin. Similarly, the Spanish province and city of León currently use the silver shield with the purple lion rampant on background from red to purple.

Comments are welcome!