By 1917 it was estimated that only one European in five was of true French descent (and these included Corsicans and Alsatians), and in the 1950s you could still hear more Spanish than French spoken in the poorer quarters of Oran. Arriving, many of them, under the Second Empire, these Spaniards had adapted themselves readily to the climate and had proved perhaps the best workers on the land. Then there were the Italians who, like most of the Spaniards, had come with empty pockets and with little more than the hope of an Eldorado where either work or land would be readily available. They were artisans, builders, miners and fishermen. There were the Maltese who, being Catholic and speaking a language akin to Arabic, had a foot in both camps and established themselves swiftly as a class of petits commerçants. Of the French, apart from the Alsatians of post-1870, most came from the climatically similar Midi; especially after the phylloxera had wiped out the vineyards there.

XREF: Connects to the broader history of French colonial settlement in North Africa and the pied-noir population.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 152