Pastora Filigrana

Pastora Filigrana is a Spanish Roma lawyer, trade unionist, feminist, columnist, and human rights activist.

Early life and education

Pastora Filigrana García was born in the Triana neighborhood of Seville. At the age of nine, it was already said the child was going to be "the gypsy lawyer". Growing up "in a ghetto" gave her a lot of social sensitivity towards issues related to equality from a young age. She learned what the class consciousness of grandmothers is "with their example of life" and labor law in the Andalusian Workers' Union.
After participating in the creation of the Asociación de Mujeres Gitanas Universitarias , she graduated in law at the age of 23 from the University of Seville.

Career

Filigrana's career began as a legal adviser for the Villela Or Gao Caló, a Roma association in the Seville neighborhood of Las 3000 Viviendas, also working with the migrant population. Later, she completed a Master's in Human Rights, Interculturality, and Development taught by the Pablo de Olavide University.
As a lawyer, Filigrana had an important role in the media in the struggles of the Moroccan strawberry harvesters of Huelva during 2019, at the same time that she warned of the causes of the electoral rise of the far-right in Spain|far-right]. In 2020, she published the book El pueblo gitano contra el sistema mundo. Unas reflexiones desde un activismo feminista y anticapitalista, in which she argues that the persecution of the Roma people has to do with their forms of community resistance through cooperation and mutual aid, and their opposition to adapting to "salary blackmail".

Selected works

2019: Descolonizar y despatriarcalizar Andalucía. Una mirada feminista gitana-andaluza en Miradas en torno al problema colonial.
2020: Desafío, el virus no es el único peligro, Ediciones Akal
2020: El pueblo gitano contra el sistema mundo. Unas reflexiones desde un activismo feminista y anticapitalista, Ediciones Akal,