Straldzha ( ) is a small

town A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

Yambol Province Yambol (, ''oblast Yambol'', former name Okrug, Yambol okrug) is a province in southeastern Bulgaria, neighbouring Turkey to the south. It is named after its main city Yambol, while other towns include Straldzha, Bolyarovo and Elhovo. The provi ...

, southeastern

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

, situated in the

Sliven Valley Sliven Valley () is situated in eastern central Bulgaria. It is named after the city of Sliven, its main settlement. It is the ninth of the eleven Sub-Balkan valleys in direction west–east and is the second largest of them, after the Sofia Val ...

. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous

Straldzha Municipality Straldzha ( ) is a small town in Yambol Province, southeastern Bulgaria, situated in the Sliven Valley. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Straldzha Municipality. As of 2022, the town had a population of 6,199. The municipality o ...

. As of 2022, the town had a population of 6,199. The municipality of Straldzha is home to 12,014 people at the end of 2016: 6,326 of whom live in the city of Straldzha and 5,688 in the villages. It has a relatively high

crude birth rate Birth rate, also known as natality, is the total number of live human births per 1,000 population for a given period divided by the length of the period in years. The number of live births is normally taken from a universal registration syste ...

of 13,8‰ and a very high

fertility rate The total fertility rate (TFR) of a population is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime, if they were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) through their lifetime, and they were t ...

of 3,01 children per woman, nearly two times higher than the national rate of 1,54 children per woman (at the end of 2016). The reason for this high fertility rate is the large concentration of ethnic

Roma people {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Romani people , image = , image_caption = , flag = Roma flag.svg , flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress , ...

in the municipality of Straldzha (nearly one-fifth of the population belong to the Romani community, which is exceeding four times the national average). The small town is a hub for

agriculture Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...

and

wine production Wine is an alcoholic drink made from fermented fruit. Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made from grapes, and the term "wine" generally refers ...

. Many residents however go to work and study in bigger cities, or abroad, in search of more opportunity. During the

communist regime A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state in which the totality of the power belongs to a party adhering to some form of Marxism–Leninism, a branch of the communist ideology. Marxism–Leninism was ...

, Straldzha was a growing town with many factories and workers from the nearby villages.

References

External links

*https://web.archive.org/web/20060103050226/http://www.straldja.net/ Towns in Bulgaria Populated places in Yambol Province {{Yambol-geo-stub