Spanish Heraldry

1.0 Presentation

1.1 What follows makes no claim to being a handbook of heraldry, nor will it attempt a history of the evolution of coats of arms in Spain. The intention is only to highlight some peculiarities of Spanish coats of arms which distinguish it within the European heraldic tradition.

1.2. Although part of the Christian world of the Middle Ages, because of its position at the edges of that world and its peculiar history, Spain developed a number of traits within its heraldry that are worthy of special notice.

1.3 Heraldry reached the peninsula at the end of the XI century, very soon after its appearance in the centres of the feudal world in France and England, but the political division of the area meant that it arrived there by different routes which lead to identifiable regional traditions: in the northeast, Galicia, in the centre Castile and Leon, with the Basque countries, in the east Catalonia and the remaining kingdoms of the Levantine coast. With the hegemony of Castile from the fifteenth century on, its heraldic tradition became typical of Spanish heraldry as a whole, although that of the other regions has remained to the present day.

1.4 In Galicia heraldry very early developed a set of compositions particular to it, whose purest form is found in its prolongation in Portugal. It would seem that that some of the most typical forms of Spanish have their origin in this part of the peninsula: the chequy shield, later of 15 pieces, the frequent location of charges in groups of five placed in saltire, or of six in two pales, all forms of composition that are rarely met with in the heraldry of other countries.

1.5. The heraldry of Castile uses partitions, typically party per pale or tierced per fess or per pale, and more rarely the ordinaries, the most common being the bend, while the chevron on the other hand is quite rare, in the composition of arms; very frequently however coats of arms are composed simply of independent charges, either singly or in multiples, or in a combination of different ones, on the plain shield. To this should be added the notable predilection for bordures, and some particular approaches to the marshalling of arms, which will be discussed later.

1.6 In spite of its peculiarities, the heraldry of Catalonia, rather like its feudal system, most resembles that of France, with the use of trinary composition, and the use of ordinaries to compose shields, and from Catalonian heraldry there is a clear continuity with the French heraldic tradition, that of Provence as much as that of the northern France.

ULLOA (Galicia)	CASTRO (Galicia)	ISASI (Guipúzcoa)	CASAS (Andalucia)	TABERNER (Cataluña)

[The blazoning of the shields illustrated in this article has been left in Spanish, to illustrate Spanish (or more accurately Castilian) practice]

ULLOA: Escudo jaquelado de oro y gules de 15 piezas, los jaqueles de gules cargado de 3 fajas de plata cada uno.
CASTRO: En campo de plata, seis roeles de azur puestos en dos palos.
ISASI: En campo de oro un árbol de sinople y dos lobos atravesantes el tronco de sable uno sobre otro, sobre la copa del árbol una estrella de azur.
CASAS: En campo de oro 5 roques de ajedrez de gules puestos en sotuer; bordura de azur con 8 cabezas de águila de oro degolladas
TABERNER: Escudo cuartelado: 1&4: en campo de gules, un chevrón de oro, acompañado de tres flores de lis de lo mismo; 2&3: en campo de plata, un árbol, terrasado, todo de sinople.

1.7 Finally, Spain’s imperial vocation has meant that it has been a country of substantial immigration by foreign nobilities, each of which has brought versions of its national heraldry, be it Italian, Portuguese, French, English, Irish, German and Swiss even.

PALAVICINO (Génova)	SILVA (Portugal)	LINIERS (Francia)	O’DONNELL (Irlanda)	DRAKE (Inglaterra)

PALAVICINO: Escudo jaquelado de nueve piezas de oro y azur, y jefe de oro cargado de una faja recortada y bretesada de tres piezas de sable.
SILVA: en campo de plata un león rampante de púrpura, coronado de oro.
LINIERS: En campo de plata una faja de gules y bordura de sable cargada de ocho besantes de plata.
O’DONNELL: Escudo cuartelado en aspa de oro y gules, y un destrochero vestido de oro moviente del flanco siniestro teniendo una cruz de gules en palo.
DRAKE: escudo cuartelado de gules y azur, y un dragén de plata brochante; jefe de oro cargado de una estrella de sable acostada de dos cruces recrucetadas del mismo color.

1.8 A surprising aspect of Spanish heraldry is the fluidity of coats of arms. In some cases it is almost impossible to establish a definitive coat of arms, even for families of some distinction. This may be to do with the weakness of the organisation for the control of arms, and possibly because of the large number of nobles, especially in the North-east, as a proportion of the population, A third element is the primacy of written sources in the registration of arms, where the value of the register depends very much on the heraldic knowledge of the person making the record. Even in the patents of entry into the Military Orders, where the existence of coats of arms was one of the proofs of the necessary noble status, there are descriptions of arms that are incomprehensible.

QUIRÓS 1 (Asturias)	QUIRÓS 2 (Asturias)	QUIRÓS 3 (Asturias)	QUIRÓS 4 (Asturias)	QUIRÓS 5 (Asturias)

QUIRÓS 1: En campo de plata dos llaves de azur puestas en palo, con sus ojos abajo entrelazados, acompañadas de tres flores de azur, una en jefe y dos en punta y de seis luneles de gules, también en palo, tres a cada lado.
QUIRÓS 2: En campo de plata, dos llaves de azur puestas en palo con sus mangos entrelazados, acompañadas de tres flores de lis de azur, una en jefe y dos en punta, y de seis luneles de gules, también en palo, tres a cada lado; bordura de gules con ocho aspas de oro.
QUIRÓS 3:Escudo terciado en faja: 1: en campo de azur un flor de lis de oro; 2: en campo de plata dos llaves de azur puestas en palo con sus mangos entrelazados, acompañadas de seis luneles de gules, también en palo, tres a cada lado; 3: en campo de azur 2 flores de lis de oro; bordura de gules con ocho aspas de oro
QUIRÓS 4:Escudo terciado en faja: 1: en campo de azur un flor de lis de oro; 2: en campo de plata dos llaves de azur puestas en palo con sus mangos entrelazados, acompañadas de seis luneles de gules, también en palo, tres a cada lado; 3: en campo de azur 2 flores de lis de oro; bordura del escudo de plata con este lema en letras de sable:«DESPUÉS DE DIOS LA CASA DE QUIRÓS»
QUIRÓS 5:En campo de plata, dos llaves de azur puestas en sotuer con sus mangos entrelazados, acompañadas de cuatro flores de lis de azur, tres en jefe y una en punta, y de cuatro rosas de gules, también en palo, tdos a cada lado; bordura de gules con ocho aspas de oro.

1.9 A further difficulty is that even today the way of blazoning certain elements of the shield has still not stabilized, creating problems of interpretation. At the same time Spanish noblemen seem to have been less interested in the precise blazon of their arms than in the mere fact of possessing them, leading to an apparently casual approach to charges, where castles and towers are interchangeable, and stars can vary from six to eight rays for the same coat of arms. Because of this there remains a vast reserve of heraldry, particularly in stone, that still awaits attribution.

1.10 It should be stated that coats of arms are still being granted today, of varying quality of design, from the elegance of those granted to the writer Camilo Jose Cela, when created marquis of iria Flavia, to the «sports club badge» of Juan Antonio Samaranch, Olympic president, not to mention a shield in the purest castilian tradition granted to the composer Rodrigo, even if it appears to reduce his musical biography to a single concerto.

CELA, marqués de Iria Flavia	SAMARANCH, marqués de Samaranch	RODRIGO, marqués de los Jardines de Aranjuez

CELA, marqués de Iria Flavia: En campo de azur dos plumas de oro dispuestas en aspa, acompañadas de tres veneras de plata, una en cada flanco y otra en punta, y en el jefe una estrella de ocho puntas de oro.
SAMARANCH, marqués de Samaranch: Terciado en palo: 1: en campo de azur una cúpula de la Iglesia de San Basilio de Moscú, de oro; 2: en campo de plata cuatro fajas ondeadas de azur; 3: en campo de oro cuatro palos de gules, y losange de plata con una cruz de gules brochante; jefe de sinople con los aros olímpicos de oro.
RODRIGO, marqués de los Jardines de Aranjuez: En campo de plata una guitarra española de su color, puesta sobre ondas de azur y plata; bordura de oro con cuatro rosas y cuatro claveles de gules, alternados.

1.11 Apart from these initial comments we do not propose to undertake a study of the historical development of Spanish heraldry, as there are now some impressive contributions to the subject by those authors mentioned in the Reference section. Nevertheless there remains much to be done as regards the history of individual family arms. The point of this study though is solely to outline the specific aspects of Spanish heraldry as they might be encountered today.

Última modificación: 31 de mayo 2006

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