The results of the official census are a great success for the Bulgarian community in Albania

Bulgarians are the third largest minority in Albania, according to the latest census data. These are the first official data on the number of Bulgarians in Albania, as the Bulgarian minority was only officially recognised in 2017. It was not until the last census that the Bulgarian ethnic minority was included in the statistical registers.

The results of the census in Albania are a good sign for the future of Bulgarian communities in the Western Balkans - says Assoc. Prof. Spas Tashev of the Institute for Population and Human Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Radio Bulgaria invited him to comment on the results of the census in Albania, where for the first time 7,057 people officially identified themselves as Bulgarian.

"Rather, this is the actual number of Bulgarians who are concentrated in three regions - the districts of Kukaska Gora, Golo Brdo and Mala Prespa," explains the researcher on the population of the Balkans. - For migration reasons, most of the local Bulgarians have settled in the interior of Albania in recent years. Many have also left. The actual number of Bulgarian speakers in Albania is about 50,000.

Of course, not all of them have a Bulgarian identity. The results of the census - as the first census in which Bulgarians were included in the registers - are a great success for the efforts of the entire Bulgarian people and Bulgarian diplomacy, which managed to persuade the Albanian state to officially recognise a Bulgarian minority and to include Bulgarians in the census documents, so that many people identified themselves as such. This is really a great achievement".

At the school in the village of Cërnalevë in Gòra region

Demographer Assoc. Prof. Tashev says that he received feedback from Albanian Bulgarians about the procedure throughout the census and that it was all in line with European standards. He mentions the large internal migration in the country, which has resulted in separate Bulgarian neighbourhoods in the capital Tirana and the town of Elbasan.

After the beginning of the democratic changes, many local Bulgarians also emigrated to Italy and Great Britain. The researcher recalls that the Bulgarian minority in Albania was once recognised by the Ottoman authorities. The presence of Bulgarians in the country was also recorded by various foreign censuses during the First and Second World Wars. The so-called Macedonian minority appeared there only after 1944, when socialist Bulgaria, for ideological reasons, did not commit itself to the fate of the Bulgarians in Albania.

"With the advent of democracy, the Bulgarian minority began to search for its identity. Once again, they turned to Bulgaria for support. We were a country in transition. We did not have the resources to help. I remember that period in the 1990s.

Then Radio Ohrid started broadcasting to Albania, journalists were sent to host Radio Korça broadcasts, so when Yugoslavia broke up and the current state of North Macedonia was established, there was very strong Macedonian propaganda among this population.

But the people did not agree with this propaganda. They began to defend their identity. 5,000 signatures were collected and submitted to the Albanian parliament. A copy of these signatures was also given to the European Parliament, which is why, in 2017, the Albanian authorities were finally forced to change their legislation and the Bulgarian national minority was officially recognised. But I stress again - this was not proven by a census, it was not known exactly where these Bulgarians lived" - recalls Assoc. Prof. Tashev the course of events.

At present, the total number of people who identify themselves as Bulgarians in Albania is 7057. "We are still waiting for a the data to be made public, so that we can see in which geographical regions of Albania they are located", the researcher specifies.

Pogradec, East Albania. Photo: Krassimir Martinov

According to his data, about 80 per cent of the population in Kukaska Gora are Bulgarians. In Golo Brdo they are around 60 per cent, while in Mala Prespa 20-25 per cent of the population identify themselves as Bulgarian. Although there is no ethnographic difference, the remaining Slavic-speaking people in the region have declared themselves to be Macedonian. "We must stress that Bulgaria has never questioned the manifestation of a Macedonian identity. Unlike Skopje, which, even after the publication of the data, claims that there is no Bulgarian community in Albania," Tashev stresses.

Assoc. Prof. Spas Tashev expects that on the basis of the census data and in the process of Albania's European integration, Golo Brdo and Kukas will be separated as independent administrative municipalities, similar to Mala Prespa. This will allow Bulgarians in Albania to maintain their livelihoods in the region by developing local and cross-border projects in cooperation with Bulgaria.

Photos: Krassimir Martinov, BGNES

Translated and posted by Elizabeth Radkova

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Assoc. Prof. Spas Tashev to Radio Bulgaria:

The results of the official census are a great success for the Bulgarian community in Albania

Bulgarians the third largest minority

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