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Saint-Cyprien (Municipality, Pyrénées-Orientales, France)

Flags of Saint-Cyprien - Images by Olivier Touzeau, 9 October 2024

Presentation of Saint-Cyprien
Flags of Saint-Cyprien
- Former flag of Saint-Cyprien

See also:

Presentation of Saint-Cyprien

Saint-Cyprien (Catalan: Perpinyà; 11,995 inhabitants; 1,580 ha) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department.

In 118 BC, the first remains of Saint-Cyprien appeared on the site of the "Villa Salix", in the middle of marshes and willow groves, not far from the annex port of the ancient Illiberis (which became Helena in the 4th century under Emperor Constantine, then Elne). A Roman road confirms the commercial exchanges between these two villages. Elne became the seat of a Bishopric in the 6th century. In 915, the name of Saint-Cyprien appeared for the first time, after a martyred Saint, Bishop of Carthage.
The village of Saint-Cyprien expanded, a church was built in the 13th century and its population was estimated at 350 inhabitants around 1385. Elne then had 2,000 inhabitants. As the land was liable to flooding, a network of canals and aqueducts was set up to drain it. Agricultural life was focused on livestock breeding (grazing cattle in the meadows), cereal growing, maritime trade and fishing.
Until the beginning of the 19th century, the coast was not inhabited.

In 1926, the population was 1,154 inhabitants, mainly grouped around the old village, while there were two small villages on the coast at the places called "Las Routas" and "l'Aygual", destroyed during the Second World War.
From 1939 to 1940, Saint-Cyprien was the site of a camp housing some 70,000 Republican escapees from Spain at the end of the Spanish Civil War. They were held in very poor conditions, in open spaces enclosed by barbed wire, from which they were not allowed to leave. During the Second World War it was used to intern people before they were sent to extermination camps.

In 1947, the Ministry of Reconstruction decided to build a housing development of 78 homes, with public funds, to rehouse the families of fishermen. This was the starting point for the boom that Saint-Cyprien would then experience, with the development of a second housing development in 1954. A great idea was born: the creation of a seaside village. The population was then 1,450 inhabitants. Saint-Cyprien is one of the seven seaside resorts developed from the 1960s as part of the interministerial mission for tourist development of the Languedoc-Roussillon coastline. It is the third largest marina in France and has seen a sharp increase in population since 1962.

Olivier Touzeau, 9 October 2024

Flags of Saint-Cyprien

The current flag of Saint-Cyprien has two variants of logo on white background:
- main part of the logo: photo, 2022
- variant logo, monochrome and inscribed in a disk: photo, 2021

Olivier Touzeau, 9 October 2024

Former flag of Saint-Cyprien

Former flag of Saint-Cyprien before 2016 - Image by Olivier Touzeau, 9 October 2024

The flag of Saint-Cyprien before 2016 was a banner of its logo, extended in the rectangular shape of a flag: photo (2016), photo.

Olivier Touzeau, 9 October 2024