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Flag of Benavente - Image by Ivan Sache, 10 January 2014
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The municipality of Benavente (19,259 inhabitants in 2012, therefore the 2nd most populous municipality in the province; 4,512 ha; municipal website, Rafael González Rodríguez' blog) is located on the northwest of Zamora Province, 60 km of Zamora. The town is situated on a hill dominating the confluence of rivers Órbigo and Esla.
Benavente emerged on the site of the Roman settlement of Brigeco /
Brigecio, shown on the Antonine Itinerary (4th century) on the way
linking Mérida and Astorga, subsequently known as the Silver Way or the Mozarab Way, indeed the oldest itinerary to Santiago de Compostela.
In the middle of the 12th century, Benavente was known as Malgrad, a
village part of the re-settlement of the territories reconquerred to
the Moors organized by the kings of León. King Ferdinand II granted in 1164 a charter to the town, which was confirmed and increased in 1167.
Considered as the benefactor of the town, the king renamed it
Benavente, gathered there the Royal court in 1176 and died in the town
in January 1189. Subsequently, Alfonso IX gathered the Parliament in
the town in 1202, while Sancho IV granted new franchises, attracting
even more inhabitants in Benavente. The Benavente Concord, signed in
1230, was an early, significant step towards the unification of the
kingdoms of Castile and León by King Ferdinand III.
The County of Benavente was erected on 17 May 1398 for the Portuguese
knight Juan Alfonso Pimentel (d. 1420), the root of a lineage that
would become one of the most prominent noble dynasties in Spain and
would rule Benavente until the end of the feudal system.
Antonio Alfonso Pimentel, 6th Count of Benavente (1530-1576), was
appointed Viceroy and Captain-General of the Kingdom of Valencia
(1567-1571). Juan Alfonso Pimentel, 8th Count of Benavente
(1576-1621), was also Viceroy and Captain-General of the Kingdom of
Valencia (1598-1602). He was also commander of Castrotorafe and merino (kind of supreme judge) of León and Asturias. King Philip IIII appointed him Viceroy of Naples in 1603; Pope Paul V rewarded his office with "several relics and more than 122 bodies of saints", which were transferred into the Benavente fortress.
Benavente was severely damaged during the War of Independence,
especially its citadel. General Lefebvre-Desnouettes was captured on
29 December 1808 in Benavente by the English troops. Napoléon himself stayed for a few days in the town.
In the later 19th century, Benavente morphed into an administrative, judicial and electoral center. The building of the Esla Canal and of the Plasencia-Astorga railway boosted the modernization of the town and its economical development. Trade also increased through popular markets and fairs, so that Benavente was granted the title of ciudad in 1929 by King Alfonso XIII.
Benavente is the birth town of Friar Toribio de Benavente Motolinía (1482-1568), a Franciscan monk who evangelized Mexico and wrote two histories of the Aztecs published long after his death (Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, 1858; Memoriales, 1903); of Francisco de Castro Pascual (1871-1949), an alumnus of Pasteur Institute in Paris and the first Professor of Microbiology in Spain (Complutense University) and member of the Royal Academy of Medicine; of Ángel Regueras López (1870-1924), Bishop of Plasencia and Salamanca and Senator; and of Federico Silva Muñoz (1923-1997), a conservative politician who played a significant role during the democratic transition and was among the founders of the People's Alliance (AP) known as the "Seven Magnificent Men".
Ivan Sache, 10 January 2014
The flag of Benavente (photo) is horizontally divided purple-yellow-purple (1:2:1) with the municipal coat of arms in the middle.
The coat of arms of Benavente is prescribed by a Decree adopted on 27
January 2005 by the Municipal Council, signed on 7 March 2005 by the
Mayor, and published on 16 March 2005 in the official gazette of Castila
y León, No. 52, p. 4,677 (text).
The coat of arms is described as follows:
Coat of arms: Shield argent, with a two-arched stone bridge, defended at each end by a fortress (or a crenelated tower) masoned sable, between the towers in the center of the bridge a statue proper of the Holy Virgin of the Vega with Child Jesus in her arms, the bridge issuant from waves azure and argent. The shield surmounted by a Royal Spanish crown.
The official arms are a "regularization" or "rehabilitation" of the
traditional arms of the town, which date back to the oldest known
seals of the town (13th century).
The Mayor of Benavente commissioned on 23 November 2003 the local
circle "Lede del Pozo" to produce a "study on the coat of arms of the
town", due to "the need to define the composition, format, colours...
of the coat of arms with precision and in compliance with the norms of
the heraldic science and tradition". In partnership with the municipal
archivist Juan Carlos de la Mata Guerra, José Ignacio Martín Benito, a member of "Lede del Pozo", released an historical memoir (El escudo de Benavente, Brigecio. Revista de Estudios de Benavente y sus Tierras, 2004, 14: 85-106) including a proposed design of the coat of arms, which would be subsequently adopted by the Municipal Council.
The traditional coat of arms of Benavente shows a bridge defended by
two fortresses and charged in the center by a statue of the Virgin
with Child Jesus. When these arms were adopted or first used is
unknown. They are clearly based, however,on the medieval seal of the
Council of Benavente, known by two preserved copies. The historical
memoir is quite elusive on those seals, which are described in detail
by Rafael González Rodríguez (El sello medieval del Concejo de Benavente - La impronta de una leyenda).
The first copy of the seal, indeed a deteriorated fragment kept in the
Sigillography section of the National Archives, comes from the
archives of the Nogales monastery. Menéndez Pidal describes it as "a small fragment of a bigger, single-sided wax seal, appended by a flax ribbon of walnut colour to the copy, undated, of a privilege granted in 1296 by King Alfonso the Wise to the shepherds of Valderi and Alixa. The field of the seal must have been covered by a big castle; the fragment shows the central gate flanked by two towers; a small figure stands in the opening of the gate".
The second copy of the seal, probably derived from the same matrix, is
kept in the Archives of the Astorga Diocese. Well-preserved, the seal
shows most details, except some gaps in the legend. The seal is of big
size, double-sided, made of ochre wax. The obverse of the seal shows
the emblematic element of the subsequent coat of arms of Benavente, a
Gothic stone bridge with five arches. This is a conventional,
stereotypical representation of the bridge built over one arm of river
Órbigo in the lower part of the town, close to the Bridge's Gate. Over the bridge are represented the walls of the town, with towers, bell
towers and a few trees, in a strictly symmetrical composition.
Characters, including a rider, are portrayed crossing the bridge and
heading to the main gate, from which they are watched by a crowned
figure.
The obverse of the seal is of canting type, Benavente meaning, more or
less "good wind". Four angels are blowing trumpets towards three
concentric disks placed in the middle of the seal. The popular
interpretation claims that the scene represents the blowing of
fecundating winds over the town, but this is rather a representation
of the angels blowing the four winds from the four angles of the Earth
(St. John's Book of Revelation, 7 : 1-2-3).
The incomplete legend of the seal is prone to several interpretations:
- Obverse: [...]ET : VILLA : BONIS : CVCTIS : REGNV : [...] NIS
- Reverse: [...]T : TRAD : VENT [...] DANT : SIC : BENAVENT[...] [A...]
The coat of arms derived from these seals was described for the first
time in the 17th century (which does not necessarily means that it was
not used earlier). In Población General de España (1645), Rodrigo Méndez Silva writes about Benavente: "Its coat of arms shows a bridge, two fortresses, and, in the middle, a statue of the Virgin". The Town's Ordinances dated 1637 state that "the Virgin shall be portrayed on the coat of arms of the town, which she protected and liberated from all its enemies by appearing on its banner or standard".
A more detailed description of the arms of Benavente appears in Antonio de
Moya's Armas, y Blasones ... de España (1756).
A drawing of the arms of Benavente is given by Francisco Mariano Nipho
(Descripción natural, política, y económica de todos los pueblos de España... (Vol. IV, 1771), as an oval shield surrounded by a garland. In the middle of the oval is represented a two-arched bridge over a river, defended at each end by a tower and with the statue of the Virgin and Child Jesus in the middle.
The arms are described, once again, in José Ledo del Pozo's Historiade la nobiliísima villa de Benavente (1853).
Moya seems to identify the bridge shown on the arms with the one built
on the "Old Mother" arm of river Órbigo, from which only an arch has
been preserved. Moya further writes that the fortresses at the ends of
the bridge represent "the greatness, value, majesty and force of the
inhabitants".
The interpretation of the statue of the Virgin is less
straightforward. Moya believes that the dedication of the town to the
Virgin is linked to protection invoked - and, seemingly, granted -
during main floods. Ledo del Pozo, however, relates that the Virgin
supported the inhabitants of Benavente in battles against the Moors;
Marian interventions are commonly alleged in chronicles of Christian
victories, the most famous of them being the battle of Covadonga. In
Benavente, the Virgin is said to have thrown stones on the assaulters,
helping the defenders of the town to repel them from the bridge. The
alluded battle must be the battle of Polvorosa, fought in 878 on the
banks of Órbigo and often described in medieval chronicles (Crónica Albeldense, Crónicon de Sampiro [c. 990], Crónica Najerense [1157-1180], Crónica General de España [1270-1289]); all of these sources, however, stick to a realistic description of the facts, without any mention of a Marian intervention, which must have been incorporated to the story not earlier than in the late 13th century. Later epic poems, such as Lorenzo de Sepúlveda's Romances (1580) and Luis Vélez de Guevara's Don Pedro Miago, incorporated the Marian miracle to the description of the battle.
Anyway, the Virgin of the Vega, whose statue is kept in the Cimanes de la Vega (León Province) sanctuary, has been the patron saint of Benavente for ages (as expected, the coat of arms of Cimanes also portrays the statue of the Virgin of the Vega). The Romanesque style of the statue matches the late 12th - early 13th century. The Cimanes
pilgrimage was mentioned in 1520 among the religious festivals
celebrated in Benavente, while the Virgin de la Vega was officially
recognized as the patron saint of the town in 1792. For the sake of
accessibility, the town was allowed in 1823 to "relocate" the
pilgrimage to a church located in Benavente, since 1841 the Santa
María del Azogue church; to prevent confusion, the Benavente statue
was renamed Virgin of the Veguilla ("small Vega").
Ledo del Pozo died in 1788 but his book was published only in 1853 for
the celebration of his 100th birthday. The frontispiece of the book
shows a big drawing of the arms of Benavente. Here the bridge has
three arches, while the fortresses have three storeys. The Virgin stands on
a cloud with a cherubim, under arches and pilasters designed in neo-
Renaissance style. This representation was for sure inspired by the
statue kept in the Santa María church rather than the Cimanes statue.
Pascual Madoz' dictionary includes a short blazon of the arms of
Benavente: "Benavente has for arms a bridge, two fortresses and, in
the middle, a statue of the Virgin". Other versions of the arms used
in the 19th century lack the Virgin, for example the arms designed in
1846 for the facade of the Town Hall by Pedro Guzmán and Manuel Díez Vecino. Pedro Sánchez Lago's Historia completa de
Benavente... (1903) uses more or less the same wording as Ledo del
Pozo for the blazon of the arms. He locates the Marian intervention
during the battle of Mato, fought in 812 against a Moorish king of
Mérida named Ores.
The use of the arms on municipal seals started in the 1820s.
During the Constitutional Period (1820-1823), a seal featuring the
arms of the town, without the Virgin, was used. The arms were
subsequently shown, as seals, on the official records of the municipal
administration. The 1849 records show a three-arched bridge, with two
towers equipped with cannons, and chapels, which are omitted in the
1850 records. In 1851, the bridge had only two arches. This design was
kept in use until the first years of the 20th century, always without
the Virgin, which was reincorporated to the arms, usually surrounded
by two towers with chapels. Variants of the bridge with either two or
three arches were frequent, too. The statue is surrounded by a halo
or light rays, above the bridge or standing on it.
The arms of Benavente were shown on the frontispiece of Alejo Enríquez Llordén's Historia de Benavente (1916) and on religious artefacts (veils, candles...) manufactured by the Romero y Grande company. They were also used on pamphlets announcing festivals (1943, 1947, 1965, 1969, 1970, 1985) with several variations in the shape of the shield,
number of arches of the bridge, representation of the Virgin.... A
significant trend was the increase in the size of the Virgin relative
to the size of the bridge and towers.
In the late 20th century, variations in the shape of the shield (for
instance, rectangular), in the relative size of its elements, and even
in the colour of the field (argent, vert, azure) were common. In the
1990s, the designer José Ortera San Francisco was unofficially
commissioned to standardize the arms, but his proposal was not used
consistently by the printers and municipal administrations.
Ivan Sache, 10 January 2014
