Spanish Immigration listens to Spanish Stories: In Spain, mailboxes can often be seen on the streets, their shape is similar to those in China, but they are yellow. Each mailbox in Spain is printed with a postal emblem, which consists of two patterns: the upper pattern is a crown, symbolizing royalty, indicating that the Spanish postal system is managed and operated by the state. The lower pattern of the emblem has puzzled many, but a journalist found the answer in a document on the history of Spanish postal services; it turns out that this pattern represents the small trumpet used by mail carriers.
Why do Spanish mail carriers use trumpets? It turns out that the postal service in Spain began in the Roman era, when there were no institutions like post offices, and letters were delivered by people walking. Later, the Spanish established several informal "post offices" modeled after the Romans, but at that time, only a few mail carriers sporadically took on the task of delivering letters.
Subsequently, Spain integrated its scattered post offices, and the Spanish postal service gradually adopted standardized services. For instance, the postal color was designated as yellow, and the uniforms of mail carriers and the horse-drawn carriages used for transporting letters were also set to yellow. This color has continued to this day. To facilitate mail delivery in rural areas, the post office provided each mail carrier with a small yellow trumpet. When a mail carrier arrived in a small village, they would blow the trumpet, signaling the villagers to gather at the threshing floor to collect or send their letters. The practice of using the trumpet to signal mail delivery was not limited to rural areas; urban mail carriers also blew their trumpets. Whenever a mail carrier arrived at an apartment building, they would blow the trumpet to notify residents, a habit that continued until the early 1970s when mailboxes were installed in every household.
In 1975, all state-owned enterprises in Spain were named after the royal family, and naturally, the postal service returned to royal status. The original postal emblem was abolished, and during the process of determining the new postal emblem, members of parliament engaged in heated debates. The reason was the question of what design would best represent the postal service. While there was no objection to using the royal crown as the main design, it was felt that a single crown would not adequately highlight the characteristics of the postal service, necessitating the addition of a secondary design beneath the crown.
For this design, members of parliament debated for a long time. Some proposed using an image of an ancient mail carriage, while others suggested depicting a person on horseback, symbolizing the mail carrier delivering letters, but none of these proposals were accepted. Consequently, the Spanish National Postal Headquarters published an advertisement in the media, hoping to gather public input to find the best postal emblem design. One day, the postal headquarters received a small package; inside was no design sketch, only a small trumpet. The sender, a retired mail carrier who had delivered letters and packages for over 40 years and had blown the mail carrier's trumpet for just as long, believed that the "trumpet" best represented the characteristics of the Spanish postal service. However, he could not draw a sketch, so he sent his trumpet to the headquarters as a proposal. The headquarters was very pleased to see the trumpet, and after discussions among the members of parliament, they unanimously agreed to adopt the trumpet as the secondary design. Subsequently, dozens of designers created artistic designs based on the trumpet's characteristics, and among hundreds of design sketches, the final design that was adopted featured the trumpet shaped like the letter "e". Thus, the design of the Spanish postal emblem was finally settled.