Grimentz
Encyclopedia
Grimentz is a village in the district of Sierre in the Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 canton
Cantons of Switzerland
The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the member states of the federal state of Switzerland. Each canton was a fully sovereign state with its own borders, army and currency from the Treaty of Westphalia until the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848...

 of Valais
Valais
The Valais is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland in the southwestern part of the country, around the valley of the Rhône from its headwaters to Lake Geneva, separating the Pennine Alps from the Bernese Alps. The canton is one of the drier parts of Switzerland in its central Rhône valley...

. An independent municipality
Municipalities of Switzerland
Communes , also known as municipalities, are the smallest government division in Switzerland, numbering 2,596 . While many have a population of a few hundred citizens, the largest cities such as Zürich or Geneva also have the legal status of municipalities...

 before, it merged on 1 January 2009 with neighboring Ayer
Ayer, Switzerland
Ayer is a village in the district of Sierre in the Swiss canton of Valais. An independent municipality before, it merged on 1 January 2009 with neighboring Chandolin, Grimentz, Saint Jean, Saint-Luc and Vissoie to form the municipality of Anniviers....

, Chandolin
Chandolin
Chandolin is a village in the district of Sierre in the Swiss canton of Valais. An independent municipality before, it merged on 1 January 2009 with neighboring Ayer, Grimentz, Saint Jean, Saint-Luc and Vissoie to form the municipality of Anniviers.-History:...

, Saint Jean
Saint-Jean, Switzerland
Saint-Jean is a village in the district of Sierre in the Swiss canton of Valais. An independent municipality before, it merged on 1 January 2009 with neighboring Ayer, Chandolin, Grimentz, Saint-Luc and Vissoie to form the municipality of Anniviers....

, Saint-Luc
Saint-Luc, Switzerland
Saint-Luc is a village in the district of Sierre in the Swiss canton of Valais. An independent municipality before, it merged on 1 January 2009 with neighboring Ayer, Chandolin, Grimentz, Saint Jean and Vissoie to form the municipality of Anniviers....

 and Vissoie
Vissoie
Vissoie is a village in the district of Sierre in the Swiss canton of Valais.The village became an independent municipality in 1905 when it split from the municipalities of Ayer and Grimentz. However, on 1 January 2009 it merged with neighboring Ayer, Chandolin, Grimentz, Saint Jean and Saint-Luc...

 to form the municipality of Anniviers
Anniviers
Anniviers is a municipality in the district of Sierre in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It was formed through the merger of six municipalities in Val d'Anniviers: Ayer, Chandolin, Grimentz, Saint-Jean, Saint-Luc and Vissoie...

.

History

Grimentz is first mentioned in 1052 as Grimiens. The village was formerly known by its German name Grimensi, however, that name is no longer used.

Geography

Lac de Moiry
Lac de Moiry
thumb|left|Map of the lakeLac de Moiry is a reservoir in the municipality of Grimentz, Switzerland. The lake has a surface area of 1.40 km² and an elevation of 2,249 m. The maximum depth is 120 m.The dam is 148 m high and was completed in 1958....

 is a reservoir completed 1958. Lac des Autannes
Lac des Autannes
Lac des Autannes is a lake above Grimentz in the canton of Valais, Switzerland. The reservoir has a surface area of 3.3 ha. It is located at an elevation of 2686 m....

 is located at an elevation of 2686 m (8,812.3 ft).
Grimentz lies at 1620 m (5,315 ft) altitude above sea level.

The village lies in the Val d'Anniviers
Val d'Anniviers
The val d'Anniviers is a Swiss alpine valley, situated in the district of Sierre in Valais, which extends south of the Rhône Valley. The valley was home to six municipalities: Ayer, Chandolin, Grimentz, Saint-Jean, Saint-Luc, Vissoie, Vercorin and Zinal. The citizens of those municipalities agreed...

 in the Pennine Alps
Pennine Alps
The Pennine Alps are a mountain range in the western part of the Alps. They are located in Switzerland and Italy...

.

Coat of arms

The blazon
Blazon
In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image...

 of the village coat of arms
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...

 is Azure between two Mullets of Four Argent a semi-orb sinister of the same and on the chief of the last four Mullets of Five of the first.

Demographics

Grimentz has a population of 385. Most of the population speaks French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 (373 or 92.3%) as their first language, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

 is the second most common (16 or 4.0%) and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 is the third (9 or 2.2%). There are 2 people who speak Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

.

Of the population in the village, 229 or about 56.7% were born in Grimentz and lived there in 2000. There were 65 or 16.1% who were born in the same canton, while 52 or 12.9% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 58 or 14.4% were born outside of Switzerland.

, there were 168 people who were single and never married in the village. There were 213 married individuals, 18 widows or widowers and 5 individuals who are divorced.

There were 49 households that consist of only one person and 14 households with five or more people. , a total of 159 apartments (15.2% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 856 apartments (81.8%) were seasonally occupied and 32 apartments (3.1%) were empty.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

Politics

In the 2007 federal election
Swiss federal election, 2007
Elections to the Swiss Federal Assembly, the federal parliament of Switzerland, were held on Sunday, 21 October 2007. In a few cantons, a second round of the elections to the Council of States was held on 11 November, 18 November, and 25 November 2007...

 the most popular party was the CVP
Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland
The Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland is a Christian democratic political party in Switzerland. It is the fourth-largest party in the National Council, with 31 seats, and the largest in the Council of States, with 15 seats. It has one seat, that of Doris Leuthard, on the Swiss...

 which received 57.69% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SVP
Swiss People's Party
The Swiss People's Party , also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre , is a conservative political party in Switzerland. Chaired by Toni Brunner, but spearheaded by Christoph Blocher, the party is the largest party in the Federal Assembly, with 58 members of the National Council and 6 of...

 (13.26%), the SP
Social Democratic Party of Switzerland
The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland is the largest centre-left political party in Switzerland....

 (11.62%) and the FDP
FDP.The Liberals
FDP.The Liberals is a classical liberal political party in Switzerland. It is the joint-largest party in the Federal Council, third-largest party in the National Council, and second-largest in the Council of States....

 (10.84%). In the federal election, a total of 243 votes were cast, and the voter turnout
Voter turnout
Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

 was 76.2%.

Economy

There were 216 residents of the village who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 44.0% of the workforce. the total number of full-time equivalent
Full-time equivalent
Full-time equivalent , is a unit to measure employed persons or students in a way that makes them comparable although they may work or study a different number of hours per week. FTE is often used to measure a worker's involvement in a project, or to track cost reductions in an organization...

 jobs was 229. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 10, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 63 of which 14 or (22.2%) were in manufacturing and 49 (77.8%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 156. In the tertiary sector; 30 or 19.2% were in the sale or repair of motor vehicles, 16 or 10.3% were in the movement and storage of goods, 58 or 37.2% were in a hotel or restaurant, 5 or 3.2% were the insurance or financial industry, 5 or 3.2% were technical professionals or scientists, 1 was in education.

, there were 49 workers who commuted into the village and 29 workers who commuted away. The village is a net importer of workers, with about 1.7 workers entering the village for every one leaving.

Religion

From the , 372 or 92.1% were Roman Catholic, while 20 or 5.0% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church
Swiss Reformed Church
The Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland was started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel , Bern , St...

. Of the rest of the population, there was 1 member of an Orthodox church
Orthodox Christianity
The term Orthodox Christianity may refer to:* the Eastern Orthodox Church and its various geographical subdivisions...

, and there was 1 individual who belongs to another Christian church. 9 (or about 2.23% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....

 or atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

, and 1 individuals (or about 0.25% of the population) did not answer the question.

Weather

Grimentz has an average of 106.7 days of rain or snow per year and on average receives 769 mm (30.3 in) of precipitation
Precipitation (meteorology)
In meteorology, precipitation In meteorology, precipitation In meteorology, precipitation (also known as one of the classes of hydrometeors, which are atmospheric water phenomena is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation...

. The wettest month is August during which time Grimentz receives an average of 82 mm (3.2 in) of rain or snow. During this month there is precipitation for an average of 10.9 days. The driest month of the year is April with an average of 52 mm (2 in) of precipitation over 8.6 days.

Education

In Grimentz about 166 or (41.1%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 29 or (7.2%) have completed additional higher education (either University or a Fachhochschule
Fachhochschule
A Fachhochschule or University of Applied Sciences is a German type of tertiary education institution, sometimes specialized in certain topical areas . Fachhochschulen were founded in Germany and later adopted by Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Greece...

). Of the 29 who completed tertiary schooling, 48.3% were Swiss men, 41.4% were Swiss women.

, there were 2 students in Grimentz who came from another village, while 36 residents attended schools outside the village.
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