Last modified: 2016-05-21 by ivan sache
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The municipality of Pinilla del Valle (205 inhabitants in 2014; 2,584 ha; municipal website) is located in the north-west of the Community of Madrid, on the border with Castilla y León (Province of Segovia), 90 km of Madrid.
The Pinilla Dam (technical data), established on river Lozoya, was inaugurated on 30 May 1967; it supplies freshwater to the town of Madrid and produces electricity (2.32 MW). The lake formed by the dam is of 480 ha in area; the vault of the dam is 33 m in height and 294 m in length.
Pinilla was named, some say, for pines (pinos) profusely growing in the area. Jiménez de Gregorio claims that the village was indeed named for "a plant with yellow, viscous flowers smelling like pines". Yet another explanation is based on penillas, huts built jointly to rocks (peñas) to keep cattle.
After the Christian reconquest, Pinilla was incorporated in 1119 to the Community of the Town and Land of Buitrago, to be transferred in 1139 to the Community of the Town and Land of Segovia. The Ensenada Cadaster (1750) lists Pinilla as inhabited by 70 villagers, 14 widows included.
The paleontological site of Pinilla del Valle, first excavated in the 1970s, was registered in 2005 as an Archeological and Paleontological Zone. The Regional Museum of Archeology is in charge of the study of the site. In 2012, bones of a marine reptile, 85 million old (Cretaceous), were found by Daniel Hontillas. The bones belongs to genus Carentonosaurus, which had been hitherto identified in only four sites worldwide.
[El Pais, 15 February 2015]
Ivan Sache, 19 July 2015
The flag (photos) and arms of Pinilla del Valle are prescribed by a Decree adopted on 19 July 2001 by the Government of the Community of Madrid and published on 3 August 2001 in the official gazette of the Community of Madrid, No. 183, pp.12-13 (text). Early proposed symbols were rejected on 3 July 1995 by the Heraldry Assessors and on 24 July 1995 by the Royal Academy of History. A new proposal was submitted on 13 December 2000, which was approved on 1 March 2001 by the Heraldry Assessors of the Division of Education.
The symbols are described as follows:
Flag: In proportions 2:3. A panel diagonally divided from upper hoist to lower fly, the upper part, white, the lower part, red, and charged in the center with the municipal coat of arms
Coat of arms: Per pale, 1. Argent a flaming sword gules, 2. Azure a vase or with three lilies proper in base waves argent and azure. The shield surmounted by a Royal Spanish crown.
The flaming sword recalls that Pinilla had the right to exert justice in the Middle Ages, in a house called Casa de la Horca (The Gallows' House).
The Royal Academy rejected an early proposal of coat of arms. It is not acceptable to insert the Marian symbol made of the vase of lilies into the arms of the Community of the Town and Land of Segovia. The Academy proposed "Per pale, 1a. Argent a branch of lilies proper in a vase gules, 1b. Fessy wavy azure and argent, 2. Gules a two-storeyed aqueduct on rocks all argent. The shield surmounted by a Royal Spanish crown."
The description of the proposed flag is incomplete, the colour of one of the quarters being omitted.
[Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1997, 194, 1: 194-195]
The coat of arms in actual use, on the flag included, has the vase placed on a field gules instead of azure and the lilies argent.
Ivan Sache, 19 July 2015
