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Bougado United Commune [Trofa City] (Portugal)

União das Freguesias de Bougado (São Martinho e Santiago), Concelho de Trofa, Distrito do Porto

image by Klaus-Michael Schneider, Valentin Poposki and Tomislav Todorović, 1 June 2024

About the flag
Presentation of Bougado

See also:

About the Flag

It is an untypical Portuguese communal flag, parted vertically of blue and green with the coat of arms centred on a white diamond separating the blue and the green section. The predecessors of the the city, São Martinho de Bougado and Santiago de Bougado, probably never had proper symbols.
It is a very handsome flag design, simple and original. It is probably the best unofficial flag of a Portuguese commune I know of. (A good flag design for a mediocre CoA, too.) And yet the CHAAP will not accept it.
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 19 Jan 2016 and António Martins-Tuválkin, June 2024

Coat of arms

image by Klaus-Michael Schneider, 19 Jan 2016

Shield Argent with base Or, issuant from base a suspension bridge Sable and Argent seen from street Or and crossing a bar wavy of Azure and Argent. In chief a cogwheel Or partially superimposed by a wheat ear Or and flanked by a crozier Or in pale at dexter and a baton Vert with a canteen Sable at sinister. Mural crown Argent with five visible towers (city rank) and white scroll with inscription in black initials "TROFA".
Acc. to source this should be the coat of arms of São Martinho de Bougado. But please note a few contradictions. The inscription in the scroll is Trofa Municipality, though the official name is "UNIÃO DAS FREGUESIAS DE BOUGADO (SÃO MARTINHO E SANTIAGO)". The mitre is an attribute of St. Martin and the baton with canteen an attribute of St. James the Elder. So both former communes are represented in these arms. The suspension bridge from another point of view can also be found in the arms of the municipality.
Meaning:
Trofa has a coat of arms and a flag. This is a misleading statement, as, yes, it does, but the well known municipal flag and coat of arms of Trofa Municipality. The subject of this discussion is a communal flag (and the coat of arms on it), not a municipal one. This commune, as indicated, is named rather Bougado, officially União das Freguesias de Bougado (São Martinho e Santiago).
The fact that this commune´s territory forms the urban nucleus of Trofa city, seat of the namesake municipality, is an interesting titbit that may help understand the design and history of its flag (it does), but calling this the Trofa communal flag is confusing. Should the name of the commune officially change (unlikely but not absurd), then it would be correct, bit as it is, it is not.
This commune was formed in 2012 by combining into one two erstwhile communes named São Martinho de Bougado and Santiago de Bougado. These names also sometimes given instead as Bougado (São Martinho) and Bougado (Santiago).
These symbols were not subjected to the legal procedure required by the relevant law but on the other hand it is being used by the communal government head in official events and is displayed at communal government facilities, so it is more than mere proposal awaiting approval. But it has no chance of being approved by the CHAAP as it is, and maybe the communal government doesn´t care.
The Catholic parishes, that relate to the situation here, might be named São Martinho do Bougado and Santiago do Bougado back in 1844, when separation of Church and State dictated that communes should be created anew, in parallel to parishes. Meanhile the territories that correspond to the former and the latter were managed separately for 180 years and there is no use in trying to keep any sort of concordance after so many changes throughout that time.
If I recall correctly, this coat of arms, in either variant, is the one proposed originally for Trofa municipality, when it was created, after decades of lobbying, in the 1990s I suspect that the current official municipal coat of arms was heavily modified by the CHAAP, to local displeasure, and now they are trying to get it adopted again as a communal coat of arms.
The current commune was created in 2012 using that naming system "União das Freguesias de ..." which is always unyielding but becomes nonsensical in cases such as these, where one original parish (that is, before 1844) had obviously been in the past split into two (or more) parishes, because their churches were too tiny, with competing saints sharing the toponym. Some of the new communes caught the chance and adopted simpler names in 2012, others did not, at least not officially.
Source: this webpage
António Martins-Tuválkin, 1 June 2024 and Klaus-Michael Schneider, 19 Jan 2016

Flag and arms have never been approved officially.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 1 June 2024

Presentation of Bougado

Bougado Commune is one of the five communes of the Trofa municipality; it had 21 612 inhabitants in 2011 and covers 27,5 km².
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 19 Jan 2016

back to Trofa Communes click here

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