In 1739 century the then-uninhabited San Pietro was colonized by people of Ligurian language and ethnicity. They had fled the Republic of Genoa's colony on the small Tunisian island of Tabarka, established in 1542 for the purpose of coral fishing, after it had been taken over by the Bey of Tunisia. Today most of the population has retained a variant of the Genoese dialect, called Tabarchino, which is also spoken in Calasetta, in the northern part of the neighboring Sant'Antioco island, whose residents are of the same origin. The island is twinned with the Spanish island of Tabarca, which was