Romani People in Spain - History

History

The gitanos emigrated from Northern India, presumably from the Punjab and Rajasthan region, as early as 1000 A.D. The music and culture of the gitanos highly influenced the cultures they had reached in Al-Andalus through North Africa. Flamenco, the heart of gitano culture, is a mixture of the various western and oriental influences which have resulted from the Andalusian history, with the later Indian influence infused by the Romani adoption of this art form.

Many sources attribute the difference between Romani culture and music in Spain to other parts of Europe to an alleged arrival of this community from North Africa. Nevertheless, historical records show that Spanish Gitanos arrived in Spain through Europe concentrating in Andalusia and adopting the region's unique hybrid culture as their own. Gitanos were recorded in Barcelona and Zaragoza by 1447. At first they were well received and were even accorded official protection by many local authorities. By 1492, a time of increased persecution of minorities, the first anti-Romani law was passed in Spain. Spanish Romanies are linked to Flamenco and have contributed a great deal to this Andalusian musical art.

Gitanos have a prominent role in Andalusian nationalism and identity, which is strongly based on a belief in the oriental basis of Andalusi heritage acted as a bridge between Gitano and non-Gitano Andalusian populations at a popular level. The father of such a movement, Blas Infante, in his book Orígenes de lo flamenco y secreto del cante jondo, etymologically, went as far as alleging that the word flamenco derives from Andalusian Arabic fellah mengu, supposedly meaning "escapee peasant", a theory now considered false. Infante believed that numerous Muslim Andalusians became Moriscos, who were obliged to convert, dispersed and eventually ordered to leave Spain stayed and mixed with the Romani newcomers instead of abandoning their land.

For about 300 years, Romanies were subject to a number of laws and policies designed to eliminate them from Spain as an identifiable group: Romani settlements were broken up and the residents dispersed; sometimes, Romanies were required to marry non-Roma; they were prohibited from using their language and rituals, and were excluded from public office and from guild membership. In 1749 A major effort to get rid of the gypsy population in Spain was carried out through a raid organized by the government. It arrested all gypsies (Romani) in the realm, and imprisoned them in labor camps.

During the Spanish Civil War, gitanos were not persecuted for their ethnicity by either side. Under Franco, Gitanos were often harassed or simply ignored, although their children were educated, sometimes forcibly, much as all Spaniards are nowadays. On the other hand, Andalusian and gitano culture was instrumentalized in the country's tourist promotion strategy which focused on the south to exalt the uniqueness of Spanish culture. However, the country's industrialization negatively affected gitanos as the migration of rural Spaniards to major cities led to the growth of shanty towns around urban areas with a consequent explosion in birth rates and a drastic fall in the quality of living and an abandonment of traditional professions. Traditional Gitano neighbourhoods such as Triana in Seville became gentrified and gitanos were slowly pushed out to the periphery and these new shanty towns.

In the post-Franco era, Spanish government policy has been much more sympathetic, especially in the area of social welfare and social services. In 1977, the last anti-Romani laws were repealed, an action promoted by Juan de Dios Ramírez Heredia, the first Romani deputy.

Since 1983, the government has operated a special program of Compensatory Education to promote educational rights for the disadvantaged, including those in Romani communities. During the heroin epidemic that afflicted Spain in the 80s and 90s, Gitano shanty towns became central to the drug trade, a problem which afflicts Spain to this day. Although the size of shanty towns has been vastly reduced in Madrid, they remain significant in other major cities such as Seville, Huelva and Almería. Nevertheless, Spain is still considered a model for integration of gitano communities when compared to other countries with Rom populations in Eastern Europe.

Many Spanish Romanies have been converted to Evangelical Christianity by US-funded religious organizations. However, the bulk of gitanos in Andalusia remain strongly faithful to the region's religious traditions such as the cult of the Virgin of the Rocío.