How many ex-pats?

[Debbie and Noel]

I sent in a little piece the other day about the Argeles carnival. As an afterthought I added that I had heard nobody speaking English. This provoked a couple of responses.

As a matter of interest does anybody have any idea how many English speakers live permanently in the PO? Is it a few hundred or are we talking thousands?

Thanks

Noel

[Kate]

It's well into the thousands Noel, that is of course including Scandinaves, Dutch, German etc, all those nationalities who find it easier to learn and speak English, or have learnt it from an early age, as well as Americans, Aussies etc

I have been told by a not necessarily very reliable source that it is approaching the 20 thous if you count second home owners.

[Santiago]

20 000 sounds a bit high doesn't it? I've heard a figure of 3500 but from an equally unreliable source. Can't even remember the source.

[Kate]

My source was the prefecture, but she wasn't sure if that was the PO or the whole of LR. i'm not sure that there are any real stats available, as the census only allows for Nationals and non Nationals, without giving nationality or lang spoken, so western and eastern europeans and other parts of the globe are all lumped together.