33 Countries of Origin’ Profiles

Produced by Euro-CIDES -FR- CAPTIVE/ JUST/2015/RDAP/AG/VICT/9243 Geography Republic of ALBANIA This flag is official since March 15, 1946, but was adopted in 1912 when the country was proclaimed independent. The eagle is above all a Byzantine symbol, but would also be an extraordinary beast of Albanian folk myths. Why two eagles with a red background? There are several answers to this question. One of them explains that if the eagle has two heads it is because there existed two religions for a single origin: Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Which would explain one body and two heads. Today, we could take this image of religion by uniting Catholicism and Orthodoxy in one head and Islam in the other. One of the other versions says that it would be more for the two dialects of Albanian, the Guegue being spoken north of the Shkumbin River and the Tosque to the south. As for colors, people more or less agree that red represents blood shed in the struggle for independence and black represents death and strength.