Pirin Macedonia (region)
It covers an area of about 6,798 km2 which is 10.18% of the geographical region Macedonia. One of the regional centers is Blagoevgrad, also known as Gorna Dzumaya, the old name of the city. The region is bordering with Kyustendil Province and Sofia Province on the north, Pazardzhik Province and Smolyan Province on the east, Greece on the south and Republic of Macedonia on the west. The population is estimated around 325.000 people.
Demographic history of Macedonia
After the Fall of Communism and a brief upsurge of Macedonian nationalism at the beginning of the 1990s, sometimes resulting in clashes between nationalist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) and ethnic Macedonian separatist organization UMO Ilinden-Pirin, the commotion has largely subsided in recent time and the ethnic Macedonian idea has become strongly marginalized. A total of 3,100 people in the Blagoevgrad District declared themselves Macedonian in the 2001 census (0.9% of the population of the region).