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Coripe (Municipality, Andalusia, Spain)

Flag of Coripe - Image from the Símbolos de Sevilla website, 25 October 2015

Presentation of Coripe
Symbols of Coripe

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Presentation of Coripe

The municipality of Coripe (1,361 inhabitants in 2014; 5,146 ha), is located 80 km south-east of Seville, on the border with the Province of Cádiz.

Coripe is of mysterious etymology, studied by Joaquín Pascual Barea. This unusual toponym cannot be traced to any Spanish, Arab or Latin root. Coripe appears relatively late in written sources: marshes of Coripe (1454), road connecting Coripe to Morón (1465). Settlement of the place was even later; Alonso García Coripe, listed in 1598, must have belonged to one of the first households that lived there. Pedro Luis Obando erected in 1612 the St. Peter chapel, aka the Coripe chapel, probably the center of the new settlement. Coripe is listed among the rural estates depending of Morón in official registers dated 1945-1649.

Coripe is usually identified with Irippo, a town established by the Turdetani and known by Roman coins from the 1st century BC. This identification can be traced back to 1757, when Father Flórez (Medallas de las colonias, municipios y pueblos antiguos de España) located Irippo "near the Sierra del Pinal, close to Zahara de la Sierra", based on the pine cone hold by the deity portrayed on the reverse of the coins. His friend Patricio Gutiérrez Bravo, parish priest in Arahal, concluded in Discursos geográphicos de la Bética romana (1761-1764) that the precise location of Irippo was "a depopulated place located three leagues from Morón, named Corripe, surrounded by pines and sharing its name with the old town." The identification of Coripe with Irippo is flawed in several aspects. Coripe is not surrounded by pines but by holly oaks, documented for centuries. The coins used as evidence, portraying the "famous" vineyards of Irippo, were indeed minted in another town, Osset, which did not prevent the flawed identification of Irripo to be repeated in numismatic treaties. Linguistic evidence rejects the identification between Coripe and Irippo, too. There is still no consensus on the location of Irippo; however, several historians believe that Irippo was located a few km south-east of Hispal (Seville), east of Alcalá de Guadaíra.
Coripe was originally used in the 18th century to designate the confluence of rivers Guadalete and Guadalporcún, 5 km of the present-day town. Accordingly, Joaquín Pascual Barea believes that the name of the place was derived from Latin corrivium, meaning "the confluence of two rivers". The use of the verb corrivare is documented in the Gesta Cameracensium episcoporum, dated 1025; corrivium was less used than confluentes, referring specifically to the confluent of small watercourses or of a small watercourse with a much bigger one.

After the Christian reconquest, Coripe was incorporated to Morón de la Frontera, of which it depended until granted the status of villa, and, therefore, municipal autonomy, on 26 April 1894. Pascual Madoz' Diccionario (1847-1850) lists Coripe as a village counting 183 households (760 inhabitants), including the small hamlet of Jerre (22 households), the farm of Nava la Higuera and three fountains supplying freshwater. The village was made of 150 houses roofed with palms, had a school for 20 children, and a parish church depending on Puerto Serrano.
[Joaquín Pascual Barea. De Coripe (Corrivium) a Sevilla (Hispal) por Utrera (Lateraria): formación y deformación de topónimos en el habla - VII Jornadas de Historia y Patrimonio de la provincia de Sevilla - Toponimia y hablas locales, pp. 49-74.]

Ivan Sache, 25 October 2015

Symbols of Coripe

The flag of Coripe (photo, photos) is horizontally divided green-white with the municipal coat of arms in the middle.

The coat of arms of Coripe (municipal website) shows on a celestial blue field a tree surmounted by a sun surrounded dexter by a white horse and sinister by a rock all proper on a base vert. The shield is surmounted by a Royal crown closed.
The horse on the arms might be a reference to the"morón horse displayed on the canting arms of Morón de la Frontera, which ruled Coripe until 1894.

The arms depict (a part of) the Zaframagón rock, located 7 km of Coripe. The rock was once the site of Moorish castle that "a single man could defend against one thousand", eventually transferred in 1240 to the King of Castile, together with the town of Morón.
The rock is the namesake in the Natural Reserve of Peñon de Zaframagon (448 ha; on the municipal territories of Coripe and Olvera; website) established on 28 July 1989 by the Government of Andalusia. The area was proclaimed in 2002 a Zone of Special Bird Protection; the rock houses the biggest colony of griffon vultures in Andalusia, also one of the biggest in Spain.

Ivan Sache, 25 October 2015