The situation became increasingly chaotic: the Republic was proclaimed in several cities and the tricolor flag was waving in their town halls.

[2] While the events were taking place, a part of the people raised the new flag in the main squares of some large Spanish cities.

The National Flag would have the Spanish Republican coat of arms at the centre (quarterly of Castile, Leon, Aragon and Navarre, enté en point for Granada, ensigned by a mural crown, between the two Pillars of Hercules).

During the Civil War there was also a military version of the flag with proportion 2:3 and without the coat of arms used by Republican Army units in different locations.

[4] The International Brigades added a three-pointed red star to the yellow band of the military Republican flag.

[2] The flag that the Second Republic adopted as its own was the same that numerous republican groups had been using as an alternative to the rojigualda ensign, which they identified with the Bourbon monarchy in Spain.

In addition to symbolizing the radical change in the government system, the inclusion of the third colour sought recognition of the people of Castilla as a vital part of a new state, under the assumption that the colours red and yellow represented the peoples of the old Crown of Aragon, and believing -erroneously- that the flag of Castile had been purple.

[12] In the decree of April 27, 1931 that imposes it, signed by the self-proclaimed and provisional Government of the Republic,[3] the inclusion of the new strip is reasoned as follows: "Today the flag adopted as national in the mid-19th century is folded.

The two colors of it are preserved and a third is added, which tradition admits as the insignia of an illustrious region, the nerve of nationality, with which the emblem of the Republic, thus formed, more aptly summarizes the harmony of a great Spain.