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Coín is situated in the fertile valley of the rio Grande and there is little doubt that a community of some kind existed on the spot long before the Roman conquest.

Nevertheless, it was the Romans who gave it the first name which has survived: Lacibis. It became a market town: a transition point for the minerals being quarried 5 kilometres or so to the south in the Sierra Blanca. Marble from these quarries was certainly used in the construction of the Roman town of Italica, which once stood close to Seville, and was the birthplace in 76AD of the future emperor, Hadrian. The quarrying of marble and the mining of iron ore went on well into the 19th Century.

A certain Captain S. E. Cook of the Royal Navy visited Coín, along with Cártama and Alhaurín in 1829, and was mightily impressed. "These villages", he wrote, "are on rising ground above the river and in beauty of situation and cultivation cannot be excelled. They afford a specimen of the whole country when possessed by the Moors, being surrounded by gardens with orange, lemon and palm trees and abounding in all the fine as well as the more common fruits." To this day an orange tree features on Coín's coat of arms.

Coín is a town which has only lately woken up to the realisation that it has a story to tell. In early 1999 the local Department of Culture embarked on a project to decorate some of the town walls with illustrated tiles depicting episodes in its history. Whether these will perpetuate the Columbus legend remains to be seen. What is unlikely is that it will remind the world that it was chosen by the BBC as the setting for its spectacularly unsuccessful soap opera, Eldorado.