Major Ethnic Groups in Each Country
Albania: Albanian
Andorra: Andorran Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosniak Croatia: Croat Greece: Greek |
Italy: Italian
Kosovo: Albanian Macedonia: Macedonian Malta: Maltese Montenegro: Montenegrin |
Portugal: Portuguese
San Marino: Sammarinese Serbia: Serb Slovenia: Slovene Spain: Spanish |
Percentages of Ethnic Groups
There is a large variety of ethnic groups in Southern Europe. As seen above, Italian is the largest ethnic groups this is because, Italy has a very large population when compared with the other South European countries.
Ethnic Distribution
Ethnic distributions in Southern Europe are mostly divided by country. The total distribution of ethnics are mostly based on the population size. For example, Italian is the most common ethnicity in Europe (39.33%), but almost all Italians are in Italy, not spread out over the entire subregion. In comparison, the country of Malta is 100% maltese but because Malta has such a small population, Maltese is only 0.26% of Southern Europe's population. There has been few ethnic conflicts in Southern Europe, but one of the ones of note was in 1999. This conflict took place when Albanians in Kosovo (at the time a province of Serbia) opposed the Serbs there. Tension grew between the two groups to the point attacks on Serb police and politicians by a group called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began. Violence and riots from both sides continued to escalate despite attempts from other European countries and the US to create a compromise between the two ethnicities. The brutality continued into the twenty-first century and only ended when Kosovo became recognized as an independent nation.