Tampa is the biggest city around the Tampa Bay and with Saint Petersburg and Clearwater opposite of the body of water its formed the second biggest metropolitan area in Florida. The three cities and the rest of the Tampa Bay Area are connected with several bridges. Its estimated that the area contains around the 4 million people and the city of Tampa is good for around 335 thousand people. I can write something about the history but the flag will tell that later. One thing make Tampa really big was the cigar industry in 1885 after the place get an railroad link in 1883. Responsible for the cigar industry was Spanish entrepreneur Vicente Martinez-Yborm, which started initially on Cuba and later in Key West his cigar manufacturies till he found out that Tampa has an great port and good railroad links with the north of the United States. He found the neighborhood Ybor City with cigar factories and houses for people to live and work there, and anything else what was needed for an community. He was so beloved that the entire city of Tampa attend his funeral. So lets take an look at the flag.
The busy looking flag in an unusual shape looks like swallow-tail only with three points. At first the flag symbolize the eras, growth and characteristics of Tampa. All those colored stripes and stars are elements of other flags of nations that has something to do with Tampa in history. Lets begin with the red and yellow stripes, those stands for Spain. Spain discovered Tampa in 1528 and colonized Florida twice, also symbolize the influx of Spanish and Cuban immigrants to work in Ybor City. On the left you see red, white and blue stripes and the latter has stars in vertical, horizontal and diagonal directions. That symbolize the countries of France, the United Kingdom and United States. France Huguenots tried to establish an colony in 1562 to 1565, but Spain kicked them out of Florida. The United Kingdom bought Florida in 1763 from Spain, the diagonal stripes stands for the U.K. Also its stands for Florida because the state flag contains an red St.Andrews cross. In 1821 Florida was purchased by the United States from Spain, the blue, white, red and stars are stands for the U.S. The green and red at the end stands for the Italian immigrants that came to Tampa. If you look in multiple positions you see three letters, the H, F and T. The letter H stands for Hillsborough County, Tampa is the county seat. The letter F stands for the state of Florida and the letter T stands for Tampa. At last if this flag not busy enough there is an seal of the city of Tampa. That seal shows the date when Tampa was incorporated as an city, the ship symbolize the connection with the world and the name of that ship is "mascotte". This flag is subject of ridicule on the internet, its very busy and that is an typical American cityflag thing.
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