Sâles, Fribourg

Sâles (sɑl, ˈʃɑlɛ) is a municipality in the district of Gruyère in the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland. In 2001 the municipality was created when Maules, Romanens, Rueyres-Treyfayes and Sâles (Gruyère) merged. Sâles has an area, , of . Of this area, or 72.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 20.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 6.1% is settled (buildings or roads) and or 1.0% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 2.7% and transportation infrastructure made up 2.8%. Out of the forested land, 18.6% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.6% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 14.6% is used for growing crops and 56.6% is pastures. The municipality is located in the Gruyère district. It consists of the villages of Maules, Romanens, Rueyres-Treyfayes and Sâles (Gruyère) which merged in 2001. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules between two Columns Argent issuant from as many mounts of the same a Bulrush Or seeded Sable. Sâles has a population () of . , 5.2% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010) the population has changed at a rate of 15.8%. Migration accounted for 11.9%, while births and deaths accounted for 3.8%. Most of the population () speaks French (562 or 95.4%) as their first language, German is the second most common (11 or 1.9%) and Portuguese is the third (10 or 1.7%). There is 1 person who speaks Italian. the population was 49.7% male and 50.3% female. The population was made up of 632 Swiss men (46.5% of the population) and 44 (3.2%) non-Swiss men. There were 649 Swiss women (47.7%) and 35 (2.6%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 250 or about 42.4% were born in Sâles and lived there in 2000. There were 246 or 41.8% who were born in the same canton, while 44 or 7.5% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 40 or 6.8% were born outside of Switzerland. children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 31.