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Last modified: 2019-09-16 by ivan sache
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The municipality of Santa Cruz del Comercio (552 inhabitants in 2014; 1,689 ha; municipal website) is located 50 km south-west of Granada. The municipality, formed of the villages of Santa Cruz del Comercio and Valenzuela (48 inh.), is an enclave within the municipal territory of Alhama de Granada.
Santa Cruz del Comercio was probably named for the Cross (cruz) of Calatrava; the Order of Calatrava was indeed granted the village after the expelling of the Moriscos in 1568.
The village was destroyed by the earthquake of 25 December 1884. Out of the 700 inhabitants of the village, 15 were killed and another 42 were injured; out of the 233 houses, 162 were destroyed and another 44 were damaged. The journalist Luis Seco de Lucena (1847-1941), founder of the newspaper El Defensor de Granada in 1880, rode on a horse to Santa Cruz; on 29 December, he forwarded the first record of the earthquake to the Madrid press, which had hitherto believed that the impact of the earthquake had been exaggerated. On 21 October 1887, the new village was inaugurated, totally rebuilt with funds offerred by the Unión del Círculo Mercantil de Madrid (Union of the Commerce Circle of Madrid), and renamed Santa Cruz del Comercio as a tribute to the benefactors. At the same time, the village of Valenzuela was nicknamed Seco de Lucena as a tribute to the journalist.
Ivan Sache, 14 May 2014
Proposed flag of Santa Cruz del Comercio - Image by Klaus-Michael Schneider, 14 May 2014
The historian Andrés García Maldonado proposed a flag for Danta Cruz del Comercio, horizontally divided blue-green with a yellow Latin cross in the middle.
The flag is derived from the coat of arms used by the municipality without official registration, "Per pale, 1. Vert a Latin cross or, 2a. Azure a castle of masoned and port and windows sable ensigned by a pomegranate or fructed gules leaved vert, 2b. Azure a quill argent equipped by two phenix wings of the same. The shield surmounted by a Royal crown closed."
The cross recalls the name of the municipality, while the fortress and the pomegranate recalls it once belonged to Alhama de Granada. The phenix wings and the quill recall the rebuilding of the village destroyed by the earthquake and the contribution of the journalist Luis Seco de Lucena.
[Símbolos de Granada website]
Ivan Sache, 27 June 2009
