Teresina (Piauí, Brazil)

The series about state capitals flags continues today, with Teresina, the first planned capital of Brazil and, more oddly, the city with third biggest lightning incidence of world.

This is the current flag of Teresina:


The coat of arms is, aside from heraldically incorrect, very redundant, as you can see on following rationale, and overloads the flag. The inescutcheon is an imprecise version of the coat of arms of Saraiva family, referring to city's founder, José Antônio Saraiva. The blue wavy base refers to Poti river, that gave the first name of the settlement, Vila Nova do Poti ("New Village of Poti"); the two anchors and two paddles stands for the navigability of Poti and Parnaíba rivers, that helped the development of the region.

As I said, the coat of arms of Saraiva family is wrongly described: the vair gives way to blue and white lozengy pattern, the fleur-de-lis should be golden instead of white, the crest should be a swordfish and the wreath should be blue and white instead of red and black.

My proposal, that uses the cited misrepresentation as a difference from original Saraiva coat of arms, is the following:


I reduced the changed Saraiva coat of arms to the main features, and stylized it to the two white wavy stripes coincide with Poti and Parnaíba river, confirming all the key symbolism of current flag.

Comments are welcome.
As I think I won't update this post before the occasion, happy Easter and/or Passover for those that commemorates them.