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Pedro Abad (Municipality, Andalusia, Spain)

Flag of Pedro Abad - Image from the Símbolos de Córdoba website, 19 September 2015

Presentation of Pedro Abad
Symbols of Pedro Abad

See also:

Presentation of Pedro Abad

The municipality of Pedro Abad (2,944 inhabitants in 2008; 2,346 ha) is located 35 km north-east of Córdoba.
The Basharat Mosque, inaugurated in Pedro Abad in 1982, is the first mosque built in Spain since the expelling of the Moors in 1492; it is ran by the Ahmaddiya Muslim Community, a Muslim sect founded in India in the late 19th century, established in Spain in 1946 and declared heretic by the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1973.

Pedro Abad (lit., Priest Peter) was founded in the 13th century by Pedro de Meneses, a clerk from the Galician parish of Santa María de Guadamil de la Marná. The tradition says that Pedro de Meneses was a member of the Galician contingent of Ferdinand III's army and that he kept a miraculous statue of the crucifixion tied to his saddle. The priest stayed in barracks formerly used during the reconquest of Córdoba and transformed into a leperhouse. The legend says that Pedro, about to eventually leave the place after the conquest of Córdoba, could not lift the statue, whose weight had dramatically increased, on his horse. Since nobody could move the statue, the king offered 3,000 maravedies to erect a chapel where the statue would be kept. The today's chapel was built in the 18th century, while the miraculous statue was destroyed during the Civil War, with only one arm left.
The first lords of Pedro Abad were from the famous Haro lineage. Philip II erected in 1559 the Marquisate of El Carpio for Diego López de Haro Sotomayor, while a later Diego López de Haro Sotomayor was made Grandee of Spain in 1640. The Haro lineage probably allied with the male heirs of the Sotomayor family via García Méndez de Sotomayor, founder around 1325 of the domain of El Castillo del Carpio.
[Juan José Antequera Lungo. Heráldica official de la provincia de Córdoba]

Ivan Sache, 19 September 2015

Symbols of Pedro Abad

The flag of Pedro Abad, adopted on 24 October 2007 by the Municipal Council and submitted on 6 November 2007 to the Directorate General of the Local Administration, is prescribed by a Decree adopted on 14 November 2007 by the Directorate General of the Local Administration and published on 26 November 2007 in the official gazette of Andalusia, No. 232, pp. 65-66 (text).
The flag is described as follows:

Flag: Flag made of two horizontal stripes of equal size; the upper, purple (Pantone 2597cvc), recalling the colour of the flag of Castile; the lower, straw-coloured (Pantons 127cvc), recalling the livery of the soldiers of the lord of Pedro Abad during the reception of Philip IV in 1624. In the middle the official coat of arms of Pedro Abad.

The coat of arms of Pedro Abad is prescribed by Decree No. 1,652, adopted on 15 June 1972 by the Spanish Government and published on 28 June 1972 in the official gazette of Andalusia, No. 154, p. 11,665 (text). This was confirmed by a Resolution adopted on 30 November 2004 by the Government of Andalusia and published on 20 December 2004 in the official gazette of Andalusia, No. 246, pp. 28,986-29,002 (text).
The coat of arms, validated by the Royal Academy of History, is described as follows:

Coat of arms: Per pale, 1. Argent two wolves sable a bordure gules charged with seven saltires or (arms of Haro), 2. Checky or and gules two fesses sable (arms of Sotomayor). Grafted argent an abbot's hat sable. The shield surmounted by a Marquis' coronet.

The arms recall that the lords of Pedro Abad at the time of the Reconquest belonged to the houses of Haro and Sotomayor. The abbot's hat represents Abbot [abad] Pedro de Meneses, the founder of Pedro Abad.
[Símbolos de las Entidades Locales de Andalucía. Córdoba (PDF file)]

The coat of arms was proposed on 5 February 1972 by the Royal Academy of History, which rejected the design proposed by the Municipal Council, "Quarterly Spain, Haro, Sotomayor and Toledo". However, the testament of the 1st Marquis of El Carpio prescribed that the arms of El Carpio should be divided per pale Haro and Sotomayor, excluding any charge from the arms of other lineages, and charged with a priest's hat recalling Pedro de Meneses. An act signed in Madrid on 25 June 1566 and approved by Philip II on 15 December 1566 prescribes the incorporation of the villages of Adamuz and Pedro Abad to the Marquisate of El Carpio.
The Academy recommended to drop the checky arms of the house of Alba, today's Marquis of El Carpio, for the sake of the heraldic rigourous organization of the arms.
[Boletín de la Real Academia de Historia, 1974, 171:1, 212]

Ivan Sache, 19 September 2015