<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> Civic Network of South Tyrol

Welcome to South Tyrol

Ethnic groups

There are living three linguistic groups in South Tyrol: the German, the Italian and the Ladin. According to the latest census, carried out in the autumn of 1991, the Germans represent 66.99 per cent of the population; the Italians represent 27.65 per cent and the Ladins represent 4.36 per cent. About 13,000 persons for various reasons did not or could not give a valid declaration as to which linguistic group they belonged or wished to be assigned.

The total resident population of South Tyrol at the end of September 2000 amounted to 461,601 persons; this represents a slight increase of the population in regard to the year 1999, due to the increase of the births, the decline of the deaths and the positive balance of emigration and immigration in South Tyrol.

The Ladins are the oldest and at the same time the smallest language group in the Province. In upper Vinschgau (Val Venosta) raeto-romanic was still spoken in the seventeenth century. Today Ladin language and culture is maintained in the two Dolomite valleys of Grödental (Val Gardena) and Gadertal (Val Badia). In the eight municipalities of these valleys an average of 90 per cent of the inhabitants declared at the 1991 census that they belonged to the Ladin language group. As the smallest language group in South Tyrol, the Ladins are the most endangered linguistic minority, with a need and entitlement to special measures of protection.

The Italians in South Tyrol live mainly in the towns of Bozen (Bolzano), Meran (Merano) and Leifers (Laives) and in the bigger centres. In the town of Bozen (Bolzano) alone live 68,109 of the total 116,914 Italians living in the whole of South Tyrol, according to the 1991 census. At the census of 1910, the last to be held before the First World War and therefore before South Tyrol's annexation by Italy, there were 17,339 Italian-speaking inhabitants in South Tyrol (2.9 per cent of the then population). The considerable increase of the Italian part in South Tyrol occurred in the 1930s (as a consequence of the violent fascist Italianization of the Province), but also in the years after 1945, reaching its peak, 34.3 per cent, at the 1961 census. At the two subsequent censuses the Italian percentage of the population slightly declined (1971: 33.3 per cent; 1981: 28.7 per cent; 1991: 27.65 per cent).

With nearly 68 per cent the German language group provides the majority. Together with the Ladins the German-speaking South Tyrolese represent a linguistic minority within the Italian state for which concerted measures of protection for the maintenance of their linguistic and cultural characteristics were instituted with the Autonomy Statute and the consequent Executive measures on the basis of the Paris Agreement.
Only in May 1989, after long years of drawn-out-negotiations was Presidential Decree n. 574/1988 on the parification of the German language with Italian in the public administration, the courts, the police, etc., promulgated.

Despite severe restrictions, laws and concerted measures against the South Tyrolese the fascists did not succeed in making an Italian land out of South Tyrol. The Paris Agreement ensures to the South Tyrolese special measures for the maintenance of their ethnic character as well as their economic and cultural development. The Autonomy Statute of 1972 which, after a long struggle, was concede by democratic Italy, represented a solid guarantee that the German and Ladin linguistic minorities can survive as ethnic groups with their own linguistic and cultural identities, so that the new autonomy and the complete implementation and observation of the measures of protection therein also form the basis for a peaceful co-existence of the three linguistic groups in the Province.
The third reformed Autonomy Statute, come into force on 16 February 2001, concedes some important rights to the Ladins.