Welcome to Spain, home to bullfighting, world class
football teams, 89 cathedrals, beautiful beaches, and siestas.
Officially the Kingdom of Spain, Spain
is kind of like a kingdom of kingdoms,
much like how the United Kingdom is, as well.
The UK flag represents three different kingdoms
that make up the country, England, Scotland, and Ireland.
The Spanish flag is kind of the same
by trying to represent the individual kingdoms that
make up the whole nation.
When looking at the flag, we see symbols
to represent the Kingdom of Castile, the Kingdom of Leon,
the Kingdom of Aragon, and the Kingdom of Navarre.
The pomegranate symbolizes the city and province of Granada.
The center fleur-de-lis is for the ruling house of Bourbon.
The pillars on either end are for the Straits of Gibraltar.
Never mind the awkward situation that Gibraltar, itself,
is a British overseas territory, home to over 30,000
British citizens.
The motto plus ultra meaning further beyond,
the red and yellow probably coming from previous Aragonese
and Catalan influences.
And finally, the crown to symbolize
the King who rules over all of this, minus Gibraltar itself.
But Spain is divided into 17 regions.
And the flag represents only a handful of them.
Here is Castille and Leon, Castille La Mancha,
Aragon, Navarre.
Granada is located over here, and the Straits of Gibraltar
are here.
But why, you may ask, does the flag
leave all these other regions out
like Galicia, Asturia, the Basque country, Catalonia,
and others off the flag?
The question as to why that's the case
can be answered by a real life game of civilization.
Over 1,000 years ago, the land that is now Spain
was conquered by the Islamic Moors.
This thing called the Reconquista happened
where Christian kingdoms started to take back the ground
that they had lost.
The biggest of these Reconquista kingdoms
were Aragon, Navarre, Castille, Leon, and Portugal.
But Castile became the very most important of these
when the kingdom absorbed Leon in 1230
because of confusing medieval inheritance laws.
But the union gave us this emblem.
Castile then set up the most famous arranged marriage
in history when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon
got hitched, basically uniting the two kingdoms.
Their marriage started the use of this banner, which
combined the symbols of Castile, Leon, and Aragon all together.
Castile would go on to conquer the last Moorish
state of Granada in 1492, which ended Islamic rule in Spain.
And Castile finally annexed Navarre in 1515.
So at this point, Castile and Aragon
were different kingdoms ruled by the same person.
But medieval succession laws are nothing short of crazy,
and the flags often change with whoever was currently in power.
So let's have a short summary.
Isabella, Queen of Castile, and Ferdinand, King of Aragon,
had a daughter together named Joanna.
In 1496, Joanna married this apparently attractive guy
named Philip the Handsome who was
from a different royal family, the house of Habsburg.
In a world where you can marry your daughter off
to some family and gain a claim on their land and money
and where that family in question ruled all of this,
then it makes perfect sense.
Feelings of love be damned.
But Isabella died in 1504 and that made Joanna
the new Queen of Castile.
She, unfortunately, gained the madness trait
somewhere along the way, however,
and became known as Joanna the Mad thereafter.
Her handsome husband, Philip, was
crowned King in 1506, which meant
that marrying their daughter off to gain those sweet claims
kind of backfired.
And Philip Von Habsburg started making Castile use this flag.
But Phillip died just a few months
after being King and poor, poor Joanna was declared insane
and sent to a nunnery for the rest of her life.
Daddy Ferdinand must have had nothing
to do with that decision, so he took his rightful place
as Regeant of Castile, until he also died ten years later.
The eldest son of Johanna and Philip
named Charles then became the King of Aragon
after him and the Regeant of Castile
since Joanna technically was still Queen,
but also technically bat shit crazy.
Charles was elevated to the full title of King of Castile
the very next year in 1517 and ushered
in nearly 200 years of Habsburg rule
in Spain using this flag, known as the Cross of Burgundy.
Charles also first introduced the motto of Plus Ultra
into Spain.
According to legend, that big strong guy from Greece
built two pillars at the Straits of Gibraltar with the motto Ne
Plus Ultra, or nothing further beyond,
which symbolized the edge of the world.
And everybody listened to that warning,
except for you, Leif Erikson.
Until Columbus blew everybody's minds,
except for you Leif Erikson, when he returned and said
surprise, there's actually stuff on that other side
of the ocean.
Charles laughed and Spain laughed and just changed
the saying that had lasted for thousands of years
to just Plus Ultra.
Yep, it turns out that Hercules guy
had hindered thousands of years of discovery, the prick.
But the last Habsburg King of Spain died in 1700,
and awkwardly stated in his will that he wanted Philip de
Bourbon to succeed him to the throne.
This started a really long and complicated war
that basically established the Bourbon dynasty in Spain
and also awkwardly gave Gibraltar to the British.
With a new family in power, that meant an update
to the coat of arms and the flags.
Philip became Philip V and established
that this coat of arms and this flag with the first use
of the blue fleur-de-lis that we see in the current flag.
His clever son, Charles III, slightly updated the flag
in 1760 to look like this.
And then in 1785, came to the rational conclusion
that it was really hard to see this flag from a distance
and know what country it actually belonged to.
He ordered that his Naval Minister create a new flag idea
that would solve this problem.
So the Minister drew up 12 sketches
and Charles really, really liked this one,
which became the new flag of the Spanish Navy.
The Spanish monarchs and the people
liked it so much that they finally
adopted it in 1843 as the first national flag of Spain.
But dirty peasant Republicans overthrew the monarchy in 1873,
but they still liked the flag.
So all they did was remove the crown from it.
But the monarchy took back power the next year in 1874
and put the crown back on the flag,
and ruled with that same flag all the way until dirty peasant
Republicans overthrew the monarchy for a second time
in 1931.
This time, the Republicans were serious about their flag change
and came up with this idea, which really messed up
the color scheme, but also first added the pillars of Hercules
and the Plus Ultra motto.
This guy was disgusted by the thought
of democracy and the weird purple striped flag.
He wanted to end it and a lot of people supported him.
But a lot of other people didn't.
They had a three year long fight and he
won, removing filthy democracy from Spain
and ushering in this flag design.
At first, he just removed that awful, awful purple stripe.
But then influenced by his love of fascism,
he went a little further and he added this eagle to it.
Is Spain part of the cool kids in Europe club now?
Since Ferdinand and Isabella drove out the last Muslims
from Spain and Franco drove out the last Republicans
and communists, he tried to linken his regime to them
by using this similar shield in the center of his flag.
And he also added the ironic words, una grande
y libre, meaning one great and free.
The design was slightly changed to this in 1945
after all the fascist governments in Europe
were obliterated except for his and remained that way
all the way until 1977.
Franco didn't die until 1975 when he was 82 years old
and the Bourbon monarchy was restored
just two days later after being absent from Spain since 1931.
This flag was passed in 1977, which has some slight redesigns
but Spain finally adopted a constitution the next year
in 1978 that established the current official flag.
So this old flag is really rare.
Less rare these days is this flag,
which if you attend any Spanish football
matches you will likely see dozens of.
Thanks for watching and leave your ideas, thoughts,
and comments about the next flag video below.
This was Real Life Lore.