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Blagoevgrad Province roughly corresponds the geographical region of '''Pirin Macedonia'''. It is considered by some [[Ethnic Macedonians]] as part of a [[United Macedonia]]. Although the idea is mostly promoted by Ethnic Macedonian Nationalists.
According to the Ethnic Macedonian human rights activists outside Europe, Chris Popov and Michael Radin, the probable number of ethnic Macedonians is about 200,000.{{Fact}} According to a study by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee performed in 1998, the people with a Macedonian national self-consciousness, however, are only between 15,000 and 25,000, whereas the vast majority of the Slavic population has a Bulgarian national self-consciousness and a regional Macedonian identity similar to the Macedonian regional identity in Greek Macedonia. Finally, according to personal evaluation of a local ethnic Macedonian political activist, Stoyko Stoykov, it is between 5,000 and 10,000 ([http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=f1218 source]). In the census in 2001 3,117 of the province's population of 341,173 described themselves as [[Macedonians (ethnic group)|ethnic Macedonians]]; the overwhelming majority declared [[Bulgarians]], 286,491 (the official data in Bulgarian [http://www.nsi.bg/Census/Ethnos.htm here]). In recent censuses Bulgarian citizens are allowed to write in themselves their ethnicity (the questionary could be seen [http://www.nsi.bg/Census/Card6.htm here], see section №14), which means that the actual number is disputed by Macedonian nationalists or their supporters
The low numbers of self-declared 'ethnic Macedonians' in the region is explained by supporters of [[Macedonism]] as resulting from repression. They also assert that the number of Macedonians in the province was much larger as recorded by the 1948 and 1956 censuses, claiming that then-[[Stalinist]] Bulgaria recognised a distinct Macedonian minority and allowed free self-determination (and implying this is not the case today). This is explained by Bulgarians as being part of the [[Comintern]]'s and the [[Bulgarian Communist Party]]'s policy of the time, which supported a [[USSR]]-backed admission of Bulgaria to [[Yugoslavia]] with the corresponding incorporation of Pirin Macedonia into Yugoslavia as part of the Macedonian Socialist Republic. With the easing of this trend the idea of promoting a separate national consciousness in Pirin Macedonia lost support from the authorities.
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