Unequal distribution
With some 633,500 inhabitants, Crete is Greece's most densely populated island (5.5% of the country's total population), with a population density of around 74 inhabitants/km². The capital, Heraklion, with a population of over 179,000, is the island's largest city, ahead of Hania and Réthymnon. It is also the 6th largest city in Greece in terms of population, after Athens, Thessaloniki, Piraeus, Patras and the municipality of Peristeri to the south of the Greek capital. The majority of the Cretan population is concentrated on the island's north coast, while the south is sparsely populated due to its mountainous terrain. As a result, 45% of the island's population lives in rural areas. The Heraklion region has a population of over 300,000. This is Crete's most densely populated region, with a population density of 110 inhabitants/km2. To the east, Lassithi has less than 80,000 inhabitants, the Hania region to the west has 150,000, while in the center, the Rethymnon region has more than 80,000 inhabitants. According to official statistics and the latest census, the average age is higher in the villages, as young people prefer to seek work and a more modern lifestyle in the big cities. It's also worth noting that the median age of women in Crete, following the general trend in Greece, is higher than that of men, by around 43.5%.
The Cretans and their Prehistory
Situated at the crossroads of maritime routes - open not only to the Mediterranean, but also to the islands of the Aegean, the Near East and Africa - Crete owes much of its cultural development to its geographical location.
Its first inhabitants settled on the island as early as the Neolithic period. It seems that these Cretans never practiced agriculture, which is one of the reasons why they are thought to be of a different origin to the ancient Greeks of the mainland. Neolithic Cretan men mostly lived outside their huts, grazing wild herds or wandering ibex among the rocks on the peaks, fishing or plying the seas to get their hands on obsidian in Melos, or stone vases in Egypt. As for the women, they stayed at home, looking after the children and doing all the domestic chores.
However, there is little evidence of the Cretans' harsh beginnings in their own land, except that in the whole of the Aegean domain, Cretan civilization was the earliest and the one that disappeared the earliest. On the other hand, Greek mythology, constantly embellished over the ages, offers a few clues to the blending of different legends from elsewhere: it is through them and through the ancient Cretan alphabet that we can be certain that on the island, in one way or another, two peoples learned to coexist and communicate with each other, and early on: the natives - the Eteocretans - and the Phoenicians.
Emigration and immigration
The Greeks, due to their political vicissitudes and the country's slow economic evolution, have been a people who migrated in order to improve their standard of living since antiquity. Greek myths are overflowing with legends of how, either because of the wrath of the gods, or because of family or dynastic saga, or, finally, because of love at first sight, one had to leave one's motherland forever or for a shorter period of time. And when they returned home, it was because they had brought back at least one fleece of gold... Over the centuries, the odyssey of the Greeks continued towards America, Australia and Germany.
In the country as a whole, the tendency after the 1950s was to move to Athens for higher education and employment. Thanks to its considerable natural resources, Crete was able to resist the desertification of its towns and countryside better than the other Greek islands: its inhabitants emigrated less, either abroad or to the metropolis. When the choice of emigration was made, it concerned Cretans whose land was either completely arid or insufficient to ensure them an acceptable standard of living.
Towards the end of the 1980s, as Greece enjoyed political stability and a degree of economic development compared to its Balkan neighbors, it became a country to which people immigrated. The first wave of immigrants came mainly from Albania, and later from Bulgaria, Romania and the former USSR. Their integration was not, and still is not, easy. The Greeks' long tradition of migration, marked by the duty of hospitality, has very often been flouted by a rise in xenophobia and racism. This is particularly true of more recently arrived ethnic minorities: Afghans, Pakistanis and other Muslim minorities, often prey to racial discrimination sometimes fuelled by far-right and tabloid newspapers.
However, unlike mainland Greece, Crete has been much more successful in integrating its immigrant workers from Albania and the Balkans. They have mainly found their place in agriculture, a very buoyant sector on the island, and one in which a decreasing number of Cretans wish to work (at least manually). In addition, a very large number of immigrant women have found work in the hotel and restaurant sector, at least during the tourist season. These immigrants are already an integral part of the Cretan population, especially the second and third generations. This is not the case for immigrants who come from Africa on boats that capsize off the coast of Libya. Their situation is very vulnerable, as most of them want to leave Crete, and Greece in general, to reach other European countries. As the asylum process in Greece has become a very slow one in recent years, the situation for Africans who choose to stay on the island is precarious, despite the efforts of local solidarity associations and humanitarian organizations.
