Safien

Safien is a former municipality in the district of Surselva in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. The municipalities of Valendas, Versam, Safien and Tenna merged on 1 January 2013 into the new municipality of Safiental.

WWW Official Site

History

Safien is first mentioned in 1219 as Stosavia.

Geography

Safien had an area,, of. 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 and the remainder is non-productive.
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 and scattered hamlets and single farm houses throughout the valley.

Coat of arms

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.

Demographics

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

year	population
1803	770
1850	685
1900	455
1950	453
2000	308
2010	305

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

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

Age group	Population	% of total
Children	49	15.9%
Teenagers	43	14.0%
Adults	24	7.8%
Adults	37	12.0%
Adults	39	12.7%
Adults	36	11.7%
Seniors	30	9.7%
Seniors	28	9.1%
Seniors	18	5.8%
Seniors	4	1.3%
Total	308	100%

Education

Around 61.7% of the population have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education. 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, the FDP and the CVP.

Economy

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

Sector	People Employed	Businesses Involved
Primary	89	35
Secondary	15	3
Tertiary	32	12