Some figures
Puglia has just over 4 million inhabitants, Calabria nearly 2 million and Basilicate less than 600,000. The three regions therefore have a total of 6,539,053 inhabitants out of the 60,000,000 people listed for the whole country. The region of Puglia alone has the two largest urban centres in the far south: Bari (319,482 inhabitants) and Taranto (195,279 inhabitants). Then comes Calabria, with Reggio di Calabria (179,049 inhabitants). Basilicata comes a long way behind, with Potenza (66 392 inhabitants) and Matera (60 388 inhabitants).
One of the characteristics of the distribution of the population of Puglia is its concentration in the medium-sized towns, i.e. the old agricultural centres to which have been added the new residential areas and small autonomous economic centres. About 35 % of the regional population lives in eleven towns with more than 50 000 inhabitants, 45 % in those with between 10 000 and 50 000 inhabitants, and the remaining 20 % in small towns
Basilicate, the most landlocked of the three regions, whose population has grown little since the 1980s, has nonetheless seen its two main towns double in size in 40 years. A third of the local population now lives in the region's ten largest municipalities, all of which have more than 10,000 inhabitants.
In Calabria, the urban settlement has radically changed in a few years: the municipalities with less than 15,000 inhabitants are losing population, those with between 15,000 and 30,000 inhabitants remain stationary and those with more than 30,000 inhabitants are growing. In Calabria there is also a tendency for the population to move from the inland towns to the coastal towns.
Between emigration and immigration
From 1870 onwards, after the unification of the Kingdom of Italy, the country became more industrialized, but struggled to catch up with its European neighbors. The majority of the Italian population was rural and, among them, 70% of citizens were farmers. Many live in poverty, cultivating a plot of land that is not sufficient to meet the needs of the household or are employed by large landowners for a miserable salary. The Italian diaspora was therefore essentially an economic phenomenon, which would experience two waves of migration: the first between 1880 and 1914, the second in the aftermath of the Second World War. The records relating to the first wave of migration show that approximately 380,000 Apulians, 880,000 Calabrians and 385,000 Lucanians left the country. Their preferred destinations were the American continent (United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela), Australia and Northern Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany). After the Second World War, migratory movements resumed, especially towards northern Europe, in demand for labour. There was also a phenomenon of internal migration: the industrial cities of the north-west of the country (Turin, Milan) attracted workers from the Mezzogiorno.
Although Italian emigration dried up in the early 1970s, migration is still a reality in southern Italy today. Economic difficulties and the lack of job opportunities push southerners, especially the younger ones, to settle in the north of the country, in Lombardy, Veneto, Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, or abroad. The locals will tell you: everyone has a relative who has left the region.
In addition to this phenomenon of emigration, from 1975 onwards, Italy has gradually become a land of welcome for immigrants. In the three southern regions, the foreign minorities come mainly from Eastern Europe, with Romania well ahead, followed by Albania, but also from Morocco and Asia (China, India). Foreign citizens represent 3.45% of the total population of Puglia, 5.5% of Calabria and 4.12% of Basilicata.
Despite its central position in the heart of the Mediterranean, the southern part of the boot is not one of the preferred destinations for migrant ships; most of them land in Sicily, Malta and Lampedusa. The secondary route to Calabria is mainly used by boats from Egypt. In the 1990s and 2000s, thousands of Kurdish refugees also disembarked there from the Turkish coast. The Puglia region has seen a massive influx of Albanians crossing the Adriatic, but this movement has gradually diminished with the political stabilisation of the country.
National language and regional dialects
In Puglia, Calabria and Basilicata, unless you are addressed in English because it has been detected that you are not from the country, you will be spoken to in Italian, the national language.
Italian, a Latin language with a melodious, lilting sound, was a latecomer: it appeared as a literary idiom in the 12th century. The Italian aristocracy and writers preferred Latin, Provençal and French for centuries. Gradually, a language was formed and formalized, thanks to the work of authors such as Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. They used the Tuscan dialect, which is the origin of Italian as we know it today
However, at the time of Italian unification, the young country was still a mosaic made up of several hundred dialects: each region defended its own, if not each locality! Linguistic unification was gradual and made possible by military service, the standardization of education and the media, first radio, then television. Today, the dialects are gradually losing their importance, but remain an essential cultural and historical reference for understanding Italy. Some of them are recognized as languages in their own right: this is the case of Neapolitan and Sicilian.
In Puglia, the dialects can be classified into two main groups which are distinguished from the phonetic point of view: in the north and centre, the Apulian dialects, which belong to the family of southern Italian dialects, like Lucanian and Campanian; in the south, the Salentine dialect, which belongs to the extreme southern Italian dialects, like Calabrian and Sicilian. Each of these groups offers a real panoply of local variants: for example, the inhabitant of Martina Franca speaks a dialect similar to that of Taranto, while his neighbour in Locorotondo, a few kilometres away, speaks a dialect close to that of Bari.
Calabria also has a wide variety of dialects, grouped together under the more generic term of Calabrian dialects. Here too, two groups can be identified: in the north, the languages derived from Neapolitan; in the south, the idioms with strong similarities to Sicilian.
In Basilicata, the Lucanian dialects include all the languages of the region and form four main linguistic areas: the Lucanian Apennine area, around Potenza but excluding the chief town where a strange form of vowel change is found whereby, for example, porco (pig) becomes porchë in the singular and puorc in the plural; the Apulo-Lucanian area to the north and east, which has strong similarities with the dialects of Foggia and Bari; the Metapontine area along the Ionian coast, which, although of Latin origin, retains Greek influences; the Calabro-Lucanian area, whose dialect extends on both sides of the border with Calabria and presents a vocalism close to both Sardinian and Sicilian.
Ethnolinguistic minorities
The Arberèches are a community of Albanian origin that has been settled in southern Italy since the 15th century and is currently spread out in several islands in the south. In 1453, the Ottoman troops of Sultan Mehmet II seized Constantinople; the Turkish advance on the Balkans was inexorable and the Albanian communities, of Catholic faith, fled in the face of the invader. They were welcomed by King Ferrante of Aragon and allowed to settle in Calabria in order to repopulate areas abandoned by their inhabitants. Their settlement in particularly isolated villages contributed to the preservation of their culture. Other waves of migration will lead to the settlement of the Arberchia in various regions of southern Italy
The Arberèches speak a dialect derived from Albanian and influenced by Italian. They follow the Greek-Catholic liturgical rite, that is, the Catholic rite in Greek. The Arberchi villages have two names, one in Italian and the other in Albanian. They are concentrated in the provinces of Foggia (Puglia), Potenza (Basilicata), Cosenza and Catanzaro (Calabria). The community also occupies several villages in Sicily, Campania, Abruzzo and Molise.
The Grecìa salentina and the Bovesia form two linguistic islands where the dialect is derived from Greek. Grecìa salentina is a territory of nine municipalities in the province of Lecce where Griko is spoken. The Bovesia or Area Grecanica is located in the southernmost part of the province of Reggio di Calabria, around the village of Bova, and the dialect there is called grecanico. Greek culture in the area was dominant in antiquity with the founding of Greek colonies and the establishment of Magna Grecia. However, the history of Grecìa Salentina is more recent, dating back to the time of the Byzantine domination: in the 9th century Byzantium encouraged the settlement of its citizens in order to strengthen its hold on the territory. The origins of Calabrian Grecanico are more obscure: for some, the dialect derives from Byzantine Greek; others maintain, however, that it can be traced back to the Greek spoken in Magna Grecia. This theory seems to be confirmed by the presence of words of the Doric dialect (spoken in the Peloponnese and the islands in antiquity) and words of ancient Greek.
Occitan is spoken in the province of Cosenza, in the municipality of Guardia Piemontese, which was founded by Waldensians from Piedmont who were fleeing religious persecution in the 13th and 14th centuries. The Occitan of Guardia Piemontese, also called Guardiolo, counts only a few hundred speakers.
