{"id":667951,"date":"2026-01-02T01:09:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T01:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/667951\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T01:09:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T01:09:24","slug":"spains-gitanos-seek-justice-and-dignity-after-centuries-of-prejudice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/667951\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain\u2019s gitanos seek \u2018justice and dignity\u2019 after centuries of prejudice"},"content":{"rendered":"

For more than 270 years a religious brotherhood in Seville has offered sanctuary to Spain\u2019s gitanos \u2014 a community that has long oscillated in the national imagination between romance and repression.<\/p>\n

Beneath the cupola of the Santuario de la Hermandad de Los Gitanos \u2014 the Church of the Gypsy Brotherhood \u2014 worshippers gather before the statues of the Virgin Mary and Christ that have become spiritual anchors for Seville\u2019s Roma community.<\/p>\n

The brotherhood was founded, according to Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Flores Vargas, its head, in response to a trauma that still resonates. In 1749, during the infamous \u201cgreat gypsy round-up\u201d, a secret nationwide operation ordered by King Ferdinand VI and devised by the Marquis of Ensenada, thousands of gitanos were arrested in a single night. Families were torn apart; men were dispatched to forced labour; women and children were confined in institutions.<\/p>\n

\"Penitents<\/p>\n

The Hermandad de Los Gitanos plays a major part of Seville\u2019s Holy Week processions in the run-up to Easter<\/p>\n

MIGUEL CANDELA\/SOPA IMAGES\/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

In 2025 Spain<\/a>\u2019s gitano community sought official recognition of that history of persecution as it marked the 600th anniversary of the first documented arrival of Romani people in the Iberian peninsula.<\/p>\n

To commemorate the anniversary, King Felipe VI spoke last year of the \u201crejection, discrimination and negative stereotypes\u201d endured by gitanos and acknowledged their contribution to Spanish identity. Some within the community interpreted the words as a long-overdue apology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe king\u2019s statement is important because there has never been an apology here,\u201d said Flores Vargas. \u201cWe can take it as a kind of apology. At the very least it gives visibility to the Roma people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question, he added, was whether symbolic recognition would translate into material change.<\/p>\n

\"King<\/p>\n

Last year King Felipe VI acknowledged the gitanos\u2019 contribution to Spanish identity<\/p>\n

CARLOS ALVAREZ\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

The government has declared 2025 the \u201cyear of the Roma people in Spain\u201d, marking a royal safe-conduct, the medieval precursor to the passport, dated January 12, 1425. That document, issued by Alfonso V of Aragon, granted passage to Juan, Count of \u201cEgypt the Lesser\u201d, and his retinue as they travelled on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela \u2014 the first recorded reference to gitanos on Spanish soil. The modern Spanish word for Romani people is derived from the word for those from Egypt.<\/p>\n

Major cultural institutions have joined the commemoration. The Prado Museum in Madrid and the Museum of the History of Catalonia in Barcelona have mounted exhibitions and programmes highlighting Roma contributions to Spain\u2019s artistic and social life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is time to do justice to the gitano people and restore their dignity,\u201d said Sara Gim\u00e9nez, head of the Fundaci\u00f3n Secretariado Gitano (FSG), a non-profit organisation working for Roma rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe knowledge people have of our people and our culture continues to be based on generalisations, negative stereotypes and prejudices,\u201d she added, \u201clargely because the history and culture of the gitanos are still absent from educational curricula and classrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

A depiction of gitano festivities by the Spanish artist Mariano Bertuchi<\/p>\n

CULTURE CLUB\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Nowhere is the tension between myth and reality more acute than in Seville. The city is the cradle of a romanticised view of Romani culture; it is also a place where many gitanos live in some of Spain\u2019s most impoverished neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n

Georges Bizet\u2019s opera Carmen, set in Seville and centred on a free-spirited gypsy woman, premiered in Paris in 1875 and marked its 150th anniversary last year. \u201cThe work helped cement enduring global stereotypes of Andalusia,\u201d said Jacobo Jim\u00e9nez, a lawyer and member of the Gitano Brotherhood. \u201cIn the 20th century Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca made gitano imagery central to his poetry. But that romanticised vision of gitanos is accompanied by other authors who perpetuated a view of us as criminals, like that given by Cervantes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Anna<\/p>\n

Bizet\u2019s Carmen, performed here at the Royal Opera House in London, is one of the more familiar depictions of Roma culture in Spain<\/p>\n

ALASTAIR MUIR\/SHUTTERSTOCK<\/p>\n

Miguel de Cervantes\u2019s short story The Little Gypsy Girl was unusual in the 17th century for portraying aspects of gitano life with admiration. Yet it opens with a stark line: \u201cIt seems that gitanos and gitanas were born into this world to be thieves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, some gitanos fear their cultural legacy is being eroded \u2014 for example, by academic arguments that downplay their role in the origins of flamenco. In his address, King Felipe sought to rebut that narrative, affirming that gitanos \u201chave been and continue to be an active part of the construction of our society, leaving a deep mark on our identity\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Jose<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Flores Vargas, right, head of the the Gitano Brotherhood, with Jacobo Jim\u00e9nez, left, one of its member<\/p>\n

ISAMBARD WILKINSON FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cTheir contributions to art, culture and language, their spirit of solidarity, all form part of our reality and our common heritage, which we value and are proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet historians and gitano organisations stress that cultural celebration sits alongside a long record of repression. By the reign of Philip II in the mid-16th century, gitanos had been present in Spain for more than a century. Royal policy then hardened sharply.<\/p>\n

Between 1559 and 1586, a series of decrees forced gitanos to abandon itinerant life, settle permanently, renounce their language and dress, and take up what authorities defined as \u201chonest\u201d trades. Those who resisted faced imprisonment, banishment or forced labour, including service in the royal galleys.<\/p>\n

Official discrimination persisted into the modern era. Under Francisco Franco\u2019s dictatorship, Romani communities were targeted through the Vagrancy and Delinquency Act and internal Civil Guard regulations which led to arbitrary arrests. Such measures remained in force until the 1978 constitution recognised all Spaniards as equal before the law.<\/p>\n

Those historical legacies, advocates argue, still shape daily life for Spain\u2019s roughly one million gitanos. In March last year a two-year-old Roma girl died from a gunshot wound to the head in a deprived neighbourhood of Plasencia, in western Extremadura. Just ten minutes\u2019 walk from the city centre, the area is dominated by feuding drug clans, with steep, badly paved alleys, scant lighting, no rubbish bins, no shops or schools and little police presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem of structural anti-gypsy discrimination is not exclusive to Spain,\u201d said Gim\u00e9nez, \u201cbut it takes on particular urgency here, given the high number of people affected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roma unemployment is three times the national average. Eighty-six per cent live in poverty; child poverty stands at 89 per cent. The school failure rate is 62.8 per cent, compared with about 4 per cent for the general population.<\/p>\n

According to FSG, one in three gitano pupils attends what it defines as \u201csegregated\u201d schools, where Roma students make up more than 31 per cent of enrolment. The expansion of state-subsidised private schools and school-choice policies has exacerbated the problem, the organisation says, compounded by distrust of formal education among some gitano families after years of stigma and exclusion.<\/p>\n

Against that backdrop, the Hermandad de Los Gitanos \u2014 best known for its prominent role in Seville\u2019s Holy Week processions \u2014 continues to provide material and spiritual support to its community.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf our 8,000 members, half are gitanos,\u201d said Flores Vargas. \u201cBut the head is \u2014 and always has been \u2014 a gitano. That is no small thing, given our history.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For more than 270 years a religious brotherhood in Seville has offered sanctuary to Spain\u2019s gitanos \u2014 a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-667951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115822838863260639","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}