Ecuador the recursive

Notice anything odd about the flag of Ecuador?

Apart from the busyness of the design, that is, and the now dodgy associations of the fasces. To be fair, there are a lot of cluttered flag designs featuring a coat of arms, and Ecuador's isn't the only coat of arms to still feature a fasces - there's one on Watford Borough Council's coat of arms, too. 

Watford Borough Coat of arms (image credit Heraldry Wiki contributor Knorrepoes)

 

Spooky coincidence; the fasces-bearing arms of Watford Borough Council were granted in October 1922, the very same year and month when Mussolini marched on Rome and then took power in Italy.

Anyway, back to Ecuador's flag, and the oddest thing about it (in my opinion). Look at the coat of arms in the middle.

The odd thing isn't the condor on top, the fasces on the bottom or the shield (?) depicting a sun, mountain, river and ship in the middle. It's what flanks the design; halberds from which are draped ... Ecuadorian flags. It's a flag containing little copies of itself. A recursive flag. A bit like the Droste effect, only not quite, with more than one small copy.

I'm now idly wondering whether there are any other flags which contain images of themselves. I think there probably must be some (although not necessarily national flags). My very quick web search hasn't turned any up, although it did come up with some recursive flags identified by Redditor and vexillology enthusiast Cawren. The trouble is, Cawren's definition of recursive wasn't quite what I was looking for; the flags cited are ones where you can zoom in infinitely, keeping the same aspect ratio and the flag will stay the same, i.e. a very boring fractal, as illustrated below.

 

But it's flags which literally contain pictures of themselves that I'd like to see and some time when I have more time and energy I'll devote more than a couple of minutes to looking for more examples. Or maybe I won't. Who knows?

 

Watch this space. Or don't.

 

Anyhow for no other reason than it seems appropriate, here's my favourite remix of that 1997 banger Ecuador, originally a hit for the DJ and record production team Sash!* (it got to number one in Flanders, Romania and Scotland). 

 

Enjoy.

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*I should point out, for those too young or old to be aware, that the exclamation mark is part of Sash!'s name, like Westward Ho! But the asterisk isn't. Obviously.