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Serrazes Commune (Portugal)

Freguesia de Serrazes, Concelho de São Pedro do Sul, Distrito de Viseu

2:3, image by António Martins-Tuválkin and Sérgio Horta´, 10 Apr 2025

Serrazes Commune

Flag
Coat of Arms
Presentation of Serrazes

See also:

Serrazes Commune

Flag

It is a typical Portuguese communal flag, with the coat of arms centred on a plain green field.
Source: Sérgio Horta´s webpage
António Martins-Tuválkin, 10 Apr 2025

Coat of Arms

image by António Martins-Tuválkin and Sérgio Horta, 10 Apr 2025

Shield Argent semy of annulets Sable an eucalyptus eradicated Vert. Mural crown Argent with three visible towers (village rank) and short white scroll, in Bénard-Guedes style, reading in black upper case serifed letters "SERRAZES"
Meaning:
The choice of this rare shield background is one of the (conflicting) trends within the CHAAP — one that strives to emulate the high quality and innovative character of Portuguese military heraldry (their creators being personally close, after all), but one which usually falls short, for various reasons. While such heraldic patterning works well in most cases (incl. a few established by the CHAAP back in the 1930s), in this one coat of arms, as the background for an intrincately detailed tree, its esthetic impact is mostly lost (a single fess or pale overall would work much better, in my opinion).
These annulets Sable are blazoned as memórias (=memories), which I haven´t encountered before, and although their arrangement is blazoned as "polvilhado" (literally: sprinkled), all known depictions show a very rigid rank-and-file pattern, not even the slighly more "organic" (and geometrically more suitable, for circular elements) staggered pattern.
Sérgio Horta´s account of these arms and flag,shows 15 fully visible annulets, in five rows per three columns, tangent to the chief, plus two columns of partly obscured annulets on either side and, barely, another row at the bottom (only the very top of the middle anulet of this 6th row is visible, due to the shape of the shield; a full partial row would be visible in a banner of these arms).
The municipal webpage shows a similar image. Even though other details agree (as the number of towers, and the scroll style), the semy background is drawn differently, showing sets of two concentric rings, lined in slightly lighter grey, not thick black rings; the pattern is the same, though: 5×3 fully visible plus more partially so at the sides and (barely) at the bottom, in a rank-and-file, not staggered, array; the details of the tree seem different as well.
The choice of an eucalyptus for this coat of arms likely reflects its local economic importance, being the agroforestry equivalent of those Soviet civic emblems boasting factory stacks belching away hazardous smoke.
Source: Ralf Hartemink´s webpage
António Martins-Tuválkin, 10 Apr 2025

Published in Diário da República: III Série on 20 September 2007, see here
António Martins-Tuválkin, 10 Apr 2025

Presentation of Serrazes

Serrazes is one of the ten communes of São Pedro do Sul Municipality not affected by the 2013 changes ; it had 890 inhabitants in 2021 and covers 16,19 km².
António Martins-Tuválkin, 10 Apr 2025

back to São Pedro do Sul Communes click here