Sardinia world (22 centenarians/100,000 inhabitants). Sardinia is the first discovered Blue Zone, a demographic and/or geographic area in the world with an oversize concentration of centenarians and supercentenarians. In 2016 there were 50,346 foreign national residents, forming 3% of the total Sardinian population. The most represented nationalities were: Sardinia's most populated cities are Cagliari and Sassari. The Metropolitan City of Cagliari has 431,302 inhabitants, or about ¼ of the population of the entire island. Eurostat has identified in Sardinia two Functional Urban Areas: Cagliari, with 477,000 inhabitants, and Sassari, with 222,000 inhabitants. Sardinia is one of the five Italian autonomous regions,
History of Sardinia first time ever a militant of a nationalist party, the Sardinian Action Party ("Partidu Sardu"-"Partito Sardo d'Azione"), was elected president of the regional parliament. Nevertheless, in the 1980s a number of even more radical pro-independence movements were born, some even managing to evolve into parties in the 1990s. In 1999, after a long period of Italian assimilation policies in Sardinia, the languages of the island were granted formal co-official status alongside Italian. Also noticeable is the difference between coastal regions and the inland. Coastal regions have always been more open to outside influences. Nowadays Sardinia is most known for its