As I commented to Luis the other night, I noticed that the Puerto Rican flag at El Morro in San Juan underwent an interesting change sometime between 2002 and 2007.

Notice that the flag displayed in 2002 used a dark blue triangle….

El Morro 2002

When I returned to Puerto Rico last year, we again visited El Morro and I took a similar photo. But it wasn’t until later that I realized the PR flag now in use has the light blue triangle.

El Morro 2007

For those who are unaware, the light blue triangle is the original design, from 1895. It was based on the Cuban flag, which was in turn based on the US flag. For the colonial authorities (first the Spanish then the Americans) it came to represent the spirit of revolution and was thus banned on the island. When Puerto Rico became a Commonwealth of the US in 1952, it was adopted as the official flag of Puerto Rico, with one important change. The blue triangle was darkened to match that of the US flag.

Fast forward to the present, and the dark triangle is commonly regarded as representative of the statehooder sentiment, while the light blue triangle is that of the independence movement.

In 1995, the official flag of Puerto Rico was reverted to that of the original design. I can only assume that the flag at El Morro was eventually changed for this very reason, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.