Gitanos
The Romani in Spain, generally known by the endonym Calé, or the exonym gitanos, belong to the Iberian Romani subgroup known as Calé, with smaller populations in Portugal and in Southern France. Their sense of identity and cohesion stems from their shared value system, expressed among gitanos as las leyes gitanas.
Traditionally, they maintain their social circles strictly within their patrigroups, as interaction between patrigroups increases the risk of feuding, which may result in fatalities. The emergence of Pentecostalism has impacted this practice, as the lifestyle of Pentecostal gitanos involves frequent contact with Calé people from outside their own patrigroups during church services and meetings. Data on ethnicity are not collected in Spain, although the public pollster CIS estimated in 2007 that the number of Calé present in Spain is probably around one million.
Name
The term gitano evolved from the word egiptano, which was the Old Spanish demonym for someone from Egipto, however, in Middle and Modern Spanish the irregular adjective egipcio supplanted egiptano to mean Egyptian, probably to differentiate Egyptians from Gypsies. Meanwhile, the term egiptano evolved through elision into egitano and finally into gitano, losing the meaning of Egyptian and carrying with it a specific meaning of Romanis in Spain. The two peoples are now unambiguously differentiated in modern Spanish, "egipcios" for Egyptians and "gitanos" for Roma in Spain, with "egiptano" being obsolete for either.Though etymologically the term gitano originally meant "Egyptian", the use itself of the Old Spanish word meaning "Egyptian" to refer to Romanis in Spain developed in the same way that the English word "Gypsy" also evolved from the English adjective "Egyptian" to refer to Romanis in Britain. Some Romanis, a people originating in the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent, upon their first arrivals to Europe, either claimed to be Egyptians for a more favourable treatment by local Europeans, or were mistaken as Egyptians by local Europeans.
Identity
The group's identity is particularly complex in Spain for a variety of reasons that are examined below. Nevertheless, it can be safely said that both from the perspective of gitano and non-gitano Spaniards, individuals generally considered to belong to this ethnicity are those of full or near-full gitano descent and who also self-identify as such. A confusing element is the thorough hybridization of Andalusian and Roma culture at a popular level. This has occurred to the point where Spaniards from other regions of Spain commonly mistake elements of one for the other. The clearest example of this is flamenco music and Sevillanas, art forms that are Andalusian rather than gitano in origin but, having been strongly marked by gitanos in interpretative style, are now commonly associated with this ethnicity by many Spaniards. The fact that the largest population of gitanos is concentrated in Southern Spain has even led to a confusion between gitano accents and those more typical of Southern Spain even though many Kale populations in the northern half of Spain do not speak Andalusian Spanish.Origin
The Romani people originate from northwestern Hindustan, presumably from the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan and the Punjab region shared between India and Pakistan.The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that the roots of the Romani language lie in the Indian subcontinent: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indic languages and shares with them a big part of the basic lexicon, for example, body parts, daily routines and numerals.
More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali. Linguistic evaluation carried out in the nineteenth century by Pott and Miklosich showed that the Romani language is to be classed as a New Indo-Aryan language, not a Middle Indo-Aryan, establishing that the ancestors of the Romani could not have left the Indian subcontinent significantly earlier than AD 1000, finally reaching Europe several hundred years later.
Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent and migrated as a group.
According to a genetic study in 2012, the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the "Ḍoma", are the likely ancestral populations of modern "Roma" in Europe.
Migration to Spain
How and when the Romani arrived in the Iberian Peninsula from Northern India is a question whose consensus is far from being reached. A popular theory, although without any documentation, claims they came from North Africa, from where they would have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to meet again in France with the northern migratory route. Thus, gitanos would be a deformation of Latin Tingitani, that is, from Tingis, today Tangier. Another, more consistent theory, and well documented, is that they entered the Iberian Peninsula from France. Although there is controversy over the date of the first arrival, since there is evidence of a safe conduct granted in Perpignan in 1415 by the infante Alfonso of Aragon to one Tomás, son of Bartolomé de Sanno, who is said to be "Indie Majoris". Or instead, it could be the so-called Juan de Egipto Menor, who entered through France, when in 1425 Alfonso V granted him a letter of insurance; he is mostly accepted as the first Romani person to reach the peninsula.In 1435 they were seen in Santiago de Compostela. Gitanos were recorded in Barcelona and Zaragoza by 1447, and in 1462 they were received with honors in Jaén. Years later, to the gitanos, the grecianos, pilgrims who penetrated the Mediterranean shore in the 1480s, were added to them, probably because of the fall of Constantinople. Both of them continued to wander throughout the peninsula, being well received at least until 1493, year in which a group of gitanos arrived at Madrid, where the Council agreed to "... give alms to the gitanos because at the request of the City passed ahead, ten reales, to avoid the damages that could be done by three hundred people who came... ".
In those years safe conducts were granted to supposedly noble Calé pilgrims. The follow-up of these safe-conducts throughout Spain has provided some data to historians according to Teresa San Román:
- The number of Romani that entered or inhabited the Peninsula in the 15th-century is estimated at 3,000 individuals.
- The Roma traveled in variable groups, of 80-150 people, led by a man.
- Each autonomous group maintained relations at a distance with one of the others, there being perhaps relations of kinship among them.
- The separation between each group was variable and sometimes some followed the others at close range and by the same routes.
- The most common survival strategy was to present as Christian pilgrims to seek the protection of a noble.
- The way of life was nomadic and dedicated to divination and performance.
First assimilation attempts
In 1492, the Roma auxiliaries helped the army of the Kingdom of Castile and León in the Reconquista in Granada ending the reign of Muslims in Spain. Spanish gitanos could only travel to America with the express permission of the king. Philip II decreed in 1570 a ban on the entry of Gypsies into America and ordered the return of those already sent. There is a known case of a Gypsy blacksmith who obtained authorization to travel to Cuba in 1602. Meanwhile, in Spain a new law ordered Roma people to sedentarize under penalty of six years in the galleys. Different factors meant that Spanish Roma, like those throughout Europe, resisted assimilation and kept their own cultural traits more or less intact.
In 1749, a major effort to get rid of the Calé population in Spain was carried out through a raid organized by the government. During this time, the Roma were subjected to mass internment in what is commonly referred to as "The Great Gypsy Round-Up" of 1749, which led to widespread forced expulsions. Their language, traditional clothing, and occupations, such as fortune-telling, were officially prohibited. In 1783, Carlos III, King of Spain and the Spanish Indies, granted citizenship to the Roma but sought their complete assimilation by forbidding the preservation of their unique culture and traditions. Additionally, the use of the term "Gitano" was banned in any context. This legislation remained in effect throughout the 19th century. Until 1783, over 250 anti-Roma decrees were enacted in Spain with the intent of dissolving the Roma as a distinct ethnic group.
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.
During the Spanish Civil War, gitanos were not persecuted for their ethnicity by either side. Under the regime of Francisco Franco, gitanos were often harassed or simply ignored, although their children were educated, sometimes forcibly, much as all Spaniards are nowadays.
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.
Beginning in 1983, the government 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 1980s and 1990s, gitano shanty towns became central to the drug trade, a problem that afflicts Spain to this day. Nevertheless, Spain is still considered a model for integration of gitano communities when compared to other countries with Romani populations in Eastern Europe.