Implications for the development

„Lecturi vizuale” 
etnologice la aromânii din Republica Macedonia – Regiunea Bitolia
. Memorie, tradiție, grai, pat-
rimoniu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Etnologică, 2018, 196 p.; 
ill., map.
The situation of the Aromanians in the Bitolia region (the town is one of the largest cities 
in the Republic of Northern Macedonia) has changed dramatically in the last 100 years. Going 
through great transformations, produced by the Balkan Wars, the First and Second World Wars, 
the destruction caused by them, the emergence of the borders of modern nation-states, many 
members of the Aromanian communities, true demographic sources once for the whole region, 
had to leave to other countries, thus drying up some of the villages and towns in which they lived 
for so long and which were often examples of worthiness for cohabitants of another ethnicity. 
The characteristic of the Aromanians to move as merchants abroad, at great distances from their 
place of birth, facilitated, in the tense historical moments – in the general context of the access to 
modernity –, the attraction to the new well-founded purpose of the families at home existence. 
Returning to one’s homeland has always been difficult, in the interwar period and in the decades 
after World War II. Today, the Aromanian communities in the region we are researching are 
much demographically diminished. Some settlements are almost completely deserted. The temp-
tation of the exodus to better horizons encompassed more and more of them, especially after, in 
Bitolia, the performing industries of the past disappeared or were transferred to other cities in 
this country. “Given all these aspects, what I have tried to present in this album is a testimony to 
the presence of Aromanians in the region in question, in the last century and a half. Beyond the 
atmosphere of abandonment, abandonment and collapse that dominates many of their hearths 
today, I wanted the cultural and spiritual values, rediscovered in those left in the villages and 
homes where they were born, to be brought to light and to become indisputable testimonial evi-
dence of their secular life in these lands”
7
.
6
Nistor Bardu, Emil Țîrcomnicu, 
„Lecturi vizuale” etnologice la aromânii din Albania – Gramsh, El-
basan, Pogradec
. Memorie, tradiție, patrimoniu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: 
Editura Etnologică, 2017 p. 4-5.
7
Nistor Bardu, Stoica Lascu, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, Ioana Iancu, 
„Lecturi vizuale” etnologice 
la aromânii din Republica Macedonia – Regiunea Bitolia
. Memorie, tradiție, grai, patrimoniu (Societa-
tea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Etnologică, 2018 p. 5.

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Conferință științifică internațională, Chișinău, 22-23 septembrie 2020, ediția a II-a
~ 463 ~
Nicolae Saramandu, Manuela Nevaci, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, 
„Lecturi vizuale” et-
nolingvistice la aromânii din Republica Macedonia – Ohrida, Struga, Crușova
. Memorie, tradiție, 
grai, patrimoniu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Universității din 
București, 2018, 196 p.; ill., map.
The new volume it’s dedicated to the Aromanians from the Ohrid, Struga, and Cruşova re-
gions (the Republic of North Macedonia). This area is loaded with a rich history of Aromanian 
communities who, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tried to assert their 
identity and cultivate in the Romanian language, founding, with the help of the Romanian state, a 
extensive network of schools and churches. Their traces are still present today, both in the places 
of worship and in the memory of the people. We exemplify with two close localities.