Bulgarians in Albania

Ethnic identity can be fluid among Albania's Slavophonic population, who might identify as Albanian, Bulgarian or Macedonian, depending on the circumstances.

[5] The first reference to a Slavic presence in Albania dates to 548, when the Slavs reached Epidamnos (Durrës), capturing fortresses in the city's vicinity.

Slavic settlement near Epirus in southern Albania is mentioned in a note in a 10th-century manuscript of Strabo's Geographica, and near Durrës in a Middle Bulgarian translation of the Manasses Chronicle.

[10] In the 850s and 860s, Boris I's First Bulgarian Empire included the Slavic-inhabited areas of what is today western North Macedonia and southern Albania, which constituted the Kutmichevitsa administrative province.

Kutmichevista included the cities of Ohrid, Glavinitsa (Ballsh), Belgrad (Berat) and Devoll (at the village of Zvezdë).

While the area was under Byzantine rule, a Bulgarian leader named Tihomir headed an uprising against the Byzantines near Drach; he was first supported but then killed by another insurgent, Peter Delyan, who proceeded to head the uprising and briefly ruled much of Albania, North Macedonia, Serbia and western Bulgaria.

[16] Francois Pouqueville, in his 1820 book Travels in Epirus, Albania, Macedonia, and Thessaly described Bulgarian villages in the Devol region.

[18] Per Meta, for the first time the existence of a Bulgarian minority in Albania was officially declared by Fan Noli in the League of Nations in 1921.

[24] Yugoslavia was suspicious of the recognition of a Bulgarian minority there and was concerned this would hinder its policy of forced Serbianisation in Serbian Macedonia.

Albanian-Bulgarian relations deteriorated completely during 1933 because in March 150 Bulgarian families were deported from the villages of Gorna and Dolna Gorica.

[30] After the fall of communism, in 1993 the then Albanian Prime Minister Aleksander Meksi openly claimed the presence of ethnic Bulgarians near the Lake Prespa.

[2][33][34][35] Two organisations for Bulgarians in Albania exist: "Prosperitet — Golo Brdo"[36] and the cultural association "Ivan Vazov" in Mala Prespa.

[42] On 15 February 2017, the EU parliament in its 2016 Annual Progress Report on Albania, recommended that the rights of people of Bulgarian ethnicity in the Prespa, Gollobordë, and Gora regions should be respected.