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The flag of El Salvador

The flag of El Salvador
Three horizontal bands of blue, white and blue, with the coat of arms — a triangle enclosing five volcanoes, a liberty cap and a rainbow — on the white.
Ratio 189:335 · current design adopted 1912

The ratio 189:335 is the strangest in the world and comes from a construction rule rather than a chosen proportion: the flag law defines the arms' triangle geometrically and the field follows from it. In practice almost everyone flies it at 3:5 and nobody notices. There is also a civil flag with the words DIOS UNIÓN LIBERTAD in gold instead of the arms. The country reverted to the federal blue-white-blue in 1912 after seventy years of a US-style stars-and-stripes design.

What the colours mean

  • Blue #0F47AF The Pacific and the Caribbean
  • White #FFFFFF Peace

Flag laws usually specify a Pantone chip, a CMYK mix or just a colour name. Converting any of those to sRGB is lossy, which is why published hex values disagree.

The symbols on it

What What it stands for
Five volcanoes The five Central American states, rising from two oceans
Liberty cap on a staff Freedom
DIOS UNIÓN LIBERTAD "God, Union, Liberty"
Ratio
189:335
Current design adopted
1912
Colours
blue, white

Common questions

What does the flag of El Salvador look like?
Three horizontal bands of blue, white and blue, with the coat of arms — a triangle enclosing five volcanoes, a liberty cap and a rainbow — on the white.
What do the colours of the El Salvador flag mean?
Blue: the Pacific and the Caribbean. White: peace.
When was the El Salvador flag adopted?
The current design dates from 1912, and its official ratio is 189:335.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked