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Groland (Fictious principality, France)

Flag of Groland - Image by Ivan Sache, 22 April 2008

Presentation of Groland
Flag of Groland

See also:

France

Presentation of Groland

The Principality (locally called "Présipality") of Groland is a fictious state created by Jules-Édouard Moustic for the French TV channel Canal+. The main Groland program is Bienvenue au Groland, to be seen every Saturday at 20:20. In French, gros means big, fat, heavy, coarse...
Initially conceived as a parodic news program ("dishonest, twisted, subjective, funny"), and sometimes criticized for its very politically uncorrect if not smutty humor, Bienvenue au Groland has generated several sequels and a complete parallel universe, which can be seen as a caricature of today's France (while Groland claims that France is a caricature of Groland!). For the celebration of its 15th anniversary, Bienvenue au Groland was able to gather 20,000 fans in the small sea resort of Quend-Plage (Picardy), the famous place of the not least famous Groland Film Festival.

The capital of Groland is the town of Gro, watered by river Gro, while the inhabitants of the Principality are the Grolandais. Groland releases passports and very popular car stickers marked "GRD".
Every inhabitant can compete for the office of President every six years but only the President can vote. The national motto is Groland, je mourrirai pour toi (Groland, I will die for you), mourrirai being a bastardized form of mourai. Several famous peoples have been granted the Honour Citizenship of Groland, for instance the Finnish movie maker Ari Kaurismäki, the Belgian pie-thrower Noêl Godin, the American activist Michael Moore and the humorists Coluche and Pierre Desproges (posthumuously).

Sources:

Official Bienvenue au Groland website
Un week-end à Groland, L'Express, 2 November 2007
Groland on Désencyclopédie, a parody of Wikipedia, "totally written by performing monkies"

Ivan Sache, 22 April 2008

Flag by Groland

The flag of Groland is officially described as bleu, blanc cassé, rouille ("blue, off-white, rust-coloured", here again a caricature of the French national flag) with the national emblem, a black amphora, in the middle. The flag is often nicknamed le drapeau à l'amphore (the amphora flag). The amphora handles are said to recall the big ears of President Christophe Salengro.
Commonly seen as an image, the flag of Groland does exist in real:
- A video posted on YouTube shows the flag of Groland waved in the stadium of Louvigny in March 2007, a small town, typically Grolandesque, located near Caen (Normandy) whose football team managed to be sponsored (in real, although everybody initially believed it was another Grolandesque hoax!) by the Principality of Groland. The flag has a very light blue stripe, as on the images, but a regular, not rust-coloured red stripe.
- A photograph dated 22 September 2007 shows the flag hoisted over a house, during the celebration event in Quend-Plage mentioned above. The exact shade of the stripes is not easy to identify on the photography.

Ivan Sache, 22 April 2008