The history of the gypsy people in the Iberian Peninsula began 600 years ago in Aragon. This is confirmed by a signed document on January 12, 1425, by which King Alfonso V authorized a dozen gypsies to move freely through the Crown of Aragon on their pilgrimage to the north. Since then, Spanish History has been stained by numerous attempts at expulsion and extermination against gypsies. Their ways of life have been shrouded in suspicions of maladjustment and crime, which often hides the great contributions of these communities where they reside.
“It is time to do justice to our people and that is why it is important that history and culture be recognized and that the situations of atrocious inequality that we live in be addressed,” Sara Giménez, general director of the Secretariado Foundation, declared in a commemorative video. Gypsy (FSG). In order to compensate them, the central government declared 2025 as the Year of the Gypsy People and during the month of January various activities are carried out around the celebration of this culture.
The festivities come at a time of vindication: structural racism is the biggest obstacle that gypsies continue to face and which is deployed in multiple ways and even from institutions.
José Francisco Rodríguez (25 years old), social worker at the Zaragoza Roma Promotion Association (APGZ), recognizes that if he has continued his studies it has been due to the efforts of his parents, although he has not had many references around him. That is why he trusts in education as an escape route from social abandonment. Despite advances in rights, Gypsies continue to encounter difficulties when it comes to accessing decent housing and work, added to the high school dropout rate that plunges them into a spiral of self-fulfilling prophecy. “We project an image in the gypsy community that is very difficult to get away from, even if you do not identify with it, relational dynamics are built around it. As a gypsy and social worker, I often have to do the pedagogical work of explaining to young people where they come from, why they live the way they do and how this unchosen situation is the result of centuries and centuries of racism,” he argues. Joséwho wants to complete a doctorate with specialization in gypsy populations.
The data used so far is quite revealing: according to a comparative study published in 2013 by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, six out of ten young Roma do not successfully complete their compulsory studies. The percentage of early school leavers stands at 63.7% compared to 13.3% for the entire population. On the other hand, the FSG warned in a 2015 study that thousands of gypsy families live in shacks (2,200 homes) and nearly 9,000 gypsy homes do not meet the habitability conditions.
However, there are many social workers and activists for the human rights of Roma who demand new and more studies of the current reality for effective actions to improve the lives of Roma. In the words of activist Vicente Rodríguez, founder of RomaPop and an international Roma representative, “there is still no reliable data on the Roma population in Spain, and the same thing happens in Europe. There is simply no political will or interest. Providing real data and research would require systemic support and interest that is not really there. Gypsies are not the priority, people are thinking about AI and robotization, at an academic and political level we are a strange anachronism.”
José regrets that of the strategy for the Roma people in Aragon, made from 2022 to 2026, it has only been possible to scratch a specific employment program for the first time in all of Spain, called Romaní Butí. “If we make strategies that are not even applied or considered because another party made them, in the end those who end up harmed are the thousands and thousands of gypsies who do not achieve their dreams”
Sometimes prejudice is put before the law. Lawyer Séfora Vargas has been denouncing these practices for years. She knows this very well as one of the first gypsy lawyers in Spain. “We have been able to see how the courts use gypsy culture as a mitigating factor in the case of “alleged gypsy marriages” and when crimes of gender violence and sexual abuse occur, they go practically unpunished or disproportionately reduced, when the victim is a gypsy minor. . It is deplorable to note that legal operators do not adhere to the rigorous literal tenor of the law, they do not apply the legal system, but rather, motivated by their own sexist and racist prejudices, their resolutions end up denigrating fundamental rights, constitutional guarantees, human rights. that the law establishes in the case of being “minors and gypsies”.
Séfora’s social commitment is tireless, she has already published two books with special interest in gypsy women, her latest work ‘History of the Gypsy People for dummies: The survival of some silenced heroes‘. “We must flee from political handouts, from the utilitarianism of yesteryear; They have always used us to take advantage of each government and reign since time immemorial. Used and discredited and, politically, reality has not changed much either. It is true that there is some mechanism that is supposedly dedicated to gypsy policies, but unfortunately and shamefully they are politicized and, therefore, when some misfortune occurs, such as the one that occurred in Peal de Becerro or Íllora, it occurs from a starvation of judicial procedures to an omission of the duty to prosecute the crime. For all this, I end up concluding that the almost unanimous request to demand a Cultural Statute for the Gypsy People is not crazy, but rather a question of social justice and historical reparation,” he concludes.
Act from the classrooms to promote change
“They put us in without classifying us by age or academic level to keep us entertained while they taught us what they could. I was between 5 and 6 years old and there were children up to 13 years old. More than a bridge school, that was a roundabout school”, Agustín Borja (44 years old) remembers his first years of literacy in a bridge school in Zaragoza. It was the eighties and Spain was trying to take measures that would bring it closer to the ideal of a country introduced in its Constitution. That center was one of hundreds built in poor neighborhoods throughout Spain under an agreement between the Ministry of Education and the Gypsy Secretariat of that time in order to educate exclusively Gypsy children before their incorporation into ordinary centers. The project, active from 1978 to 1986, marked an important precedent, not without controversy, in the desire for gypsies in Spain to receive equal conditions as full citizens.
As planned, the oldest of five siblings joined a normalized school where “there were protests by the neighbors to not let us in.” Agustín relives that image while his mother accompanied him: “I was afraid of them and they were afraid of me.”
As a result of those episodes, Agustín developed a voracious interest in knowing the history of his people. The constant situations of job insecurity motivated him to get his ESO at the age of 30 and continue with a FP until he became a social mediator. “The educational system is the key to all inclusion, it has a direct impact on the world of work and, in turn, on acquiring a home.” Agustín believes that the history of the Gypsy people should be known more in the classrooms. In fact, he gives awareness talks at different institutes in Zaragoza.
Together with his 25-year-old sister Lorena Borja, a basketball referee and aspiring police officer, Agustín is part of the many people of the gypsy ethnic group who provide a fresh and inspiring perspective for those who do not give up and fight every day to achieve their dreams without abandon their identity marks.
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