Safien

Safien is first mentioned in 1219 as Stosavia.

Safien had an area, as of 2006, of 100.6 km² (38.8 sq mi). Of this area, 45.6% is used for agricultural purposes, while 18.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 0.8% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (35.4%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers or mountains).

The former municipality was the capital of the Safien sub-district of the Surselva district in the mid and upper Safien valley. The only other municipality in the sub-district was Tenna, which occupied the lower Safien valley. The valley is drained by the Rabiusa river.

The former municipality consists of the village of Safien-Platz (elevation: 1,350 m (4,430 ft)) and scattered hamlets and single farm houses throughout the valley.

The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules a Cross gyronny Argent and Sable It is based on the simple design of the sub-district, with different colors.

As of 2011, Safien has a population of 294. The historical population is given in the following table:

As of 2008, 0.3% of the population was made up of foreign nationals.

As of 2000:

• most of the population speaks Swiss German (96.1%), with Swiss Italian being second most common ( 1.6%) and Albanian being third ( 1.6%).
• the gender distribution was 49.5% male and 50.5% female.
• the age distribution was as follows:

Education

Around 61.7% of the population (between age 25-64) have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule). The nearest fachhochschules to Safien are in Chur, such as the Chur University of Applied Sciences and Fachhochschule Graubünden.

Politics

In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 62.4% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SP (18.8%), the FDP (7.4%) and the CVP (5.4%).

As of 2005, Safien has an unemployment rate of 0.46%. Employment and businesses were organized as follows: