I’ve seen a few variations of the Scottish Saltire in recent years, and I’ve also found many feel it difficult to tell if a person is flying the saltire as a show of pride in their nation, or to demonstrate their desire for independence. In Catalonia, they have a solution for this, you see in Catalonia, the flag is La Senyera, a gold and red striped flag. However a variation of that flag has been used throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century named La Senyera Estelada, quite literally translating from Catalan to mean “The Starred Flag” and is often just shorted to “L’Estelada”, or “The Starred”. It was originally based on the flags used by Puerto Rico and Cuba who gained independence from Spain in 1898 and 1902.

It’s worth noting that Catalonia does not intend to use L’Estelada when they do gain independence but, in fact, use the true flag of Catalonia, the simple Senyera with no triangle and no star. In this way, the Catalan flag that we all see so often by our kin in struggle for independence really is a protest flag. I felt that we could use a similar flag, and so I’ve put together the following, “La Saltire Estelada”.

The Saltire Estelada depicts the Scottish Saltire Flag with a gold star centred within its left triangle. The colours of the flag are navy-blue (#003399) and gold (#FFCC00) using the official colours of the EU flag and, of course, white (#FFFFFF) for the saltire. The star represents our wish for independence, its colour our wish to be a member of the European Union. It also acknowledges our friendship and shared, peaceful struggle with Catalonian independence campaigners.

I am licensing this as Creative Commons Zero (CC0) meaning it is public domain, everyone is free to use this as they wish without attributing me.

Downloads:

Illustrator file

SVG file

PNG file