Antikythera:
When winter arrives in Antikythera, the isolated Greek island’s already meager population shrinks to almost nothing.
“We are 20 to 25 people, no children, no bakery,” said local leader Giorgos Harhalakis, who is fighting an uphill battle to revive the small Aegean island’s fortunes.
“I’m not giving up,” he told AFP.
Antikythera, a piece of land between the islands of Kythera and Crete, like many other rural areas in Greece, is experiencing steady depopulation.
When the last national census was conducted in 2021, the country’s population was just 39, down from 120 in 2011.
Photo credit: AFP
Harhalakis, 37, still remembers his early years in primary school in the 1990s, before his family, like others, was forced to move to the mainland due to “financial difficulties”.
At the time, the island was home to “farmers, fishermen and pastoralists” and had about 15 communities, he said.
Today, only the port of Potamos is inhabited.
On the rocky heights of Antikythera, the drystone walls of terraced fields are still visible between abandoned and collapsed houses.
The only connection from the island to the outside world is by boat to Kythera and Crete.
Shuttered schools
The exodus meant the school was closed for 20 years before reopening in 2018 for just three students: the children of Despina and Dionysis Andronikos, a couple from Antikythera returning from Athens.
“But in 2021, when my eldest daughter finished primary school, we had to leave so she could go to secondary school in Kythera,” said Dionysis Andronikos.
The school was forced to close again – one of dozens across Greece to face a similar fate due to a lack of students when the school year started last month.
Photo credit: AFP
According to EU data agency Eurostat, Greece’s fertility rate of 1.43 children per woman in 2021 is below the EU average of 1.53 children.
A recent study by the Greek Institute of Demographic Research (IDEM) found that one in three municipalities in the country has fewer than ten births per year.
The institute attributed this to the aging of the Greek population, but also to “the extremely unequal distribution of the population”.
Athens is home to over a third of the country’s 10.5 million residents.
And with more than a fifth of the population aged 65 and over, Greece ranks fourth among EU member states with the highest number of elderly people.
Only Italy (23.8 percent), Portugal (23.7 percent) and Finland (23.1 percent) score higher according to Eurostat.
To make matters worse, more than half a million young people left the country during the financial crisis of the past decade.
There have been some attempts to attract new residents to areas in need.
In the mountain village of Fourna, in central Greece, the local church invited large families to move in to avoid the closure of the local school.
In September, this initiative attracted a family with six children.
But a similar effort, launched three years ago in Antikythera, has so far failed to bear fruit.
Old computer, new hope
For Harhalakis, the island’s community leader, the biggest problem is “the lack of infrastructure. The state should provide incentives” for the construction of houses and shops, he said.
In winter the island has only one café, which serves as both a tavern and a small shop. It is run by a man in his eighties.
“The indigenous population is aging and the future of the island is in doubt,” said Catherine Dechosal, a retired Frenchwoman who divides her time between the island and her homeland.
This year the government introduced a baby bonus to combat the demographic collapse.
But experts warn that increasing the number of births is not the only answer.
“Death rates and immigration play a decisive role and should not be downplayed,” Vyron Kotzamanis, director of IDEM, recently told Greek state news agency ANA.
Harhalakis hopes the planned climate change observatory on the island will create jobs.
Antikythera already enjoys great fame in the scientific world.
A 2nd century astrological clock, believed to be the oldest computer in the world, was found by sponge divers offshore in the early 20th century among the remains of a Roman-era shipwreck.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)