When winter arrives in Antikythera, the already small population of the isolated Greek island drops to almost zero.
“There are 20 to 25 of us, no children, no bakery,” said local leader Giorgos Harhalakis, who is waging an uphill battle to revive the fortunes of the tiny Aegean island.
“I’m not giving up,” he told AFP.
Like many rural areas of Greece, a strip of land between the islands of Kythera and Crete, Antikythera, is also facing continued depopulation.
When the last national census was taken in 2021, it had only 39 inhabitants, down from 120 in 2011.
Photo courtesy: AFP
Harhalakis, 37, still remembers his first years in primary school in the 1990s, when his family, like many others, was forced to move to the mainland due to “financial problems”.
At the time, he said, the island was home to “farmers, fishermen and pastoralists” and had about 15 communities.
Today, only the port of Potamos is inhabited.
In the rocky heights of Antikythera, the dry stone walls of terraced fields are still visible among abandoned and collapsed houses.
The island’s only connection to the outside world is by boat to Kythera and Crete.
schools closed
The exodus meant the school closed for two decades before reopening in 2018 to just three pupils – the children of Despina and Dionysis Andronikos, an Antikythera couple who returned 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,” Dionysis Andronikos said.
The school was forced to close again – one of dozens across Greece that faced a similar situation due to a lack of pupils when the school year started last month.
Photo courtesy: AFP
Greece’s fertility rate of 1.43 children per woman in 2021 is below the EU average of 1.53 children, according to EU data agency Eurostat.
A recent study by the Greek Institute for Demographic Research (IDEM) found that one in three municipalities in the country have fewer than 10 births per year.
The institute attributed this to Greece’s aging population as well as the “extremely unequal distribution of population”.
Athens is home to more than a third of the country’s 10.5 million residents.
And with over a fifth of its population aged 65 and over, Greece has the fourth highest number of elderly people among EU member states.
According to Eurostat, only Italy (23.8 percent), Portugal (23.7 percent) and Finland (23.1 percent) ranked higher.
To make matters worse, more than half a million young people left the country during the financial recession of the last decade.
Some efforts have been made to attract new residents to needy areas.
In the mountainous village of Forna in central Greece, the local church invited large families to live there to save the local school from closing.
In September, the initiative attracted a family with six children.
But a similar effort, launched three years ago in Antikythera, has so far failed to bear fruit.
Ancient Computer, New Hope
For Harhalakis, the island’s community leader, the main problem is “the lack of infrastructure. The state needs to provide incentives for the construction of houses and shops”, he said.
In winter, there is only one café on the island, which serves as both a tavern and a small shop. It is run by a man over eighty years of age.
“The native population is aging, and the future of the island is in doubt,” said Catherine Decosal, a retired French woman who divides her time between the island and her homeland.
This year the government introduced the Baby Bonus to combat demographic decline.
But experts warn that increasing the number of births is not the only solution.
“Mortality and migration play a decisive role and should not be underestimated,” IDEM director Vyron Kotzamanis recently told Greek state news agency ANA.
Harhalakis hopes the planned climate change observatory on the island will create jobs.
Antikythera already enjoys immense fame in the scientific world.
A 2nd-century astrological clock, believed to be the world’s oldest computer, was found by sponge divers in the early 20th century amid the remains of a Roman-era shipwreck off its coast.
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