Legend has it that a group of Spaniards, led by the young Francisco Cortés de Sanbuenaventura, nephew of Hernán Cortés, crossed the coasts of Jalisco and the Riviera Nayarit in search of pre-Hispanic treasures and conquests.

One day they arrived on the shores of Xiautla, currently known as Puerto Vallarta, where more than 20 thousand indigenous people were waiting for them, all of them with feather flags in hand and a quiver, the cylinder in which arrows were transported, ready to defend their lands.

The Spaniards thought to attack, but one of the friars got off the ship to meet the natives, but not before taking a banner of the Immaculate Conception and the Holy Cross, and knelt before them. The golden flashes of the banner are said to have calmed the natives’ spirits and they dropped their weapons. It was there that the beach of the bay was covered with the beautiful colored feather flags.

This is how this territory takes its name: Bahía de Banderas, which will forever remember the first meeting of those characters who gave history and mestizo culture to these shores of the Pacific Ocean.  With the passage of time, the area was known as Bahía de Banderas, a name that was to be preserved when decreeing, in December 1989, it’s designation as a municipality of the state of Nayarit.