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Agualva-Cacém Commune (Portugal)

2:3, image by António Martins-Tuválkin and Sérgio Horta, 8 Dec 2025

Agualva-Cacém Commune

Flag
Coat of Arms
Presentation of Agualva-Cacém

See also:

Commune

Flag

It is a typical Portuguese communal flag with the coat of arms centred on a field quartered of yellow and blue.
Source: Sérgio Horta´s webpage
António Martins-Tuválkin, 8 Dec 2025

Coat of Arms

António Martins-Tuválkin

Sérgio Horta

Shield Azure, a bridge Or on a fess wavy Argent and Azure, under two windmill wheels, sailed Argent and “roped” Or, in chief, a bishop tiara Argent lined red.""
Meaning:
The colours of the flag are illegal, for blue is the shield background colour (and the rules say that colours of the charges of the coat of arms should be used) and yellow touches the edge of the shield. I’d bet that when (soon enough) Agualva-Cacém becomes an “independent” municipality (independent from Sintra, that is) , new colours will be issued for this flag, and these will be red and white (also to prevent neighbouring municipalities to have the same colors, since Sintra is also yellow and blue). The putative new municipality will probably encompass only the current commune (itself scheduled to be divided into 3 or 4 new communes), so the current municipal flag is likely to be retained in the new status. All this would cause the eastern part of Sintra municipality (Queluz) also to “seceed” (or to become an unlikely enclave). As for the meaning of the coat of arms, well, it’s the usual: The bridge stands for a bridge, the river stands for a river, the windmill wheels stand for windmills, and the episcopal tiara stands for a bishopric.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 6 Mar 1998 / 8 Dec 2025

Published in Diário da República: III Série on 1 February 1995,
António Martins-Tuválkin, 8 Dec 2025

Presentation of Agualva-Cacém

Cacém was till 1940 a small village some 20 km away from Lisbon, of no importance whatsoever apart from being a major railway junction, midway between the capital and the prestigeous banlieu of Sintra (of Lord Byron’s «glourious Eden of Sintra» fame), whose municipality this village is part of. Then industrialization and rural exodus came to Portugal and a lot of small villages near Lisbon boomed into cheap and unplanned housing for thousands of people. In less than 15 years Cacém become Europe’s most populated commune (comparison makes sense only against countries with simillary small civil divisions). In that process, the two neighbouring villages of Agualva and Cacém merged , and eventually a hybrid commune arose, called "Agualva - Cacém" — for none of both “belongs” to the other. Needless to say, it is an awful place, sharing neither the beauties of the countryside, nor the cultural richness of a real city, being only a “dormitory” town of people that work in Lisboa all day. However, it does have a nice coat of arms, and flag, also.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 6 Mar 1998

Agualva Cacém was divided into four independent communes in 2001: Agualva, Cacém, Mira-Sintra and São Marcos. On 29 September 2013 the four communes were regrouped: Agualva merged with Mira-Sintra and Cacém with São Marcos.
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 23 June 2015

Other Flags

Clube «Unidos do Cacém»

António Martins-Tuválkin

This rises from the logo-on-bedsheet monotony and is quite a flag attaction of Cacém: The local sport and hobby association, CUC - Clube "Unidos do Cacém", flies a black and yellow flag, per saltire a saltire conterchanged; over all, the club’s logo simple enough to “pass” the dull flag test. This image shows the reverse, nota bene, for the obverse has not only lettering on it (full name and founding date — just like Oregon!), but also somewhat different measures, due to sewing technique, I’d say…
António Martins-Tuválkin, 6 Mar 1998

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