São Vicente municipality (Cabo Verde) (original) (raw)

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Konsedju di Sansent

Last modified: 2025-11-01 by antónio martins
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[](../images/c/cv-13.gif)
image by Waldir and António Martins, 24 Apr 2017

• Presentation
• About the flag
  • Emblem detail
• Pre-2004 city logo
• Colonial era flag

See also:

• Cabo Verde
• Subnational flags of Cabo Verde
• Local party M.M.S.V.

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Presentation

São Vicente municipality covers in full the eponymous island (in English: St. Vincent Island — in Cabo Verde, eastern Atlantic, not to be confused with St. Vincent Island in the Caribbean); it includes also the uninhabited St. Lucy Island and a few uninhabited islets, to the east.
António Martins, 24 Apr 2017

The former incarnation of the current municipality was named after its capital, Mindelo city: Mindelo / São Vicente municipality have had three city emblems: Colonial, post-independence, and current. Along with these, two or three flags existed.
António Martins, 24 Apr 2017

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About the flag

The emblem is used on a blue and white flag, gyronny of eight in Portuguese style, divided along diagonals and apothemas (photoof official use: 2015.06.16 mayoral interviewgiven to the national television). This background for a caboverdean municipal flag is apparently unique, adding to plain, quartered, horizontal bicolor, and rayonny. Maybe it is a reminiscence of the colonial flag.
António Martins, 25 Apr 2017

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Emblem detail

More recently (after 2004; when exactly?) a new emblem was adopted and it inherits the maritime topics of the previous two: Just like most current caboverdean municipal emblems, it has a round shield surrounded on the top half by a ring of ten yellow stars interrupted at the middle by a chain of four green links and with a scroll along the bottom. The circular shield (double edged in blue and white) is Celeste (light blue) with a base Azure wavy of four charged at dexter with a helmwheel Tenny/Orangy (orange, contrasting with both golden/yellow and with red) and at sinister with an anchor counterbendwise Gules and issuant from this base a mountain Tawny/Brown at dexter and issuant also from the mountain a dimidiated cogwheel Or and in chief a bird volant Proper holding a book (?) Argent written Sable. (Some images of this emblem: [1] [2] [3].)
António Martins, 25 Apr 2017

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Pre-2004 city logo

After independence in 1974-1975, the colonial coat-of-arms and its flag fell out of use and there’s information of a city emblem (= municipal emblem?) that includes 1975-1992 Caboverdean emblematics; this was reported and depicted by Wikimedia user:Waldir, adding that it went out of use in 2004: This emblem includes some elements of the contemporary national emblem, namely the black star on red, the scallop at the bottom, and (half) a wreath of maize, and adds blue sea, a fish, an anchor, and a section of a cogwheel. I don’t know whether this emblem was use on a flag.
António Martins, 25 Apr 2017

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Colonial era flag

A colonial era flag existed, along with the well known coat of arms, published i.a. in a collection of 1961 Portuguese postage stamps (example facsimiles: [1] [2] [3]). It is

• party per pale:
  • On the I Argent a cross patty Gules voided (Order of the Knights of Christ)
  • and on the II Vert issuant from a base Argent and Vert wavy a two-sail caravel Sable dressed Argent and flagged of Portugal ancien and bearing a crow Sable.
    The sinister partition of these arms refer to the island’s namesake, St. Vincent (same boat as in Lisbon’s arms), and it may have been taken wholesale to create the 1935 arms of Cape Verde.
• Mural crown Argent with five visible towers (city rank) and scroll reading «_Labor omnia vincit improbus_» (a Virgil quote). Since this was an official (colonial) Portuguese municipal coat of arms it necessarily was accompanied by a flag.
  António Martins, 25 Apr 2017

As quoted by Sérgio Horta, the flag was gyronny of white over green. The scroll text reading the more usual toponym instead of a literary quote seems to be the official, or later, version. It is unclear whether flags already existed when the Latin motto was replaced.
António Martins, 23 Oct 2025

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Anything below this line was not added by the editor of this page.