Gypsies in Madrid

Sex, Gender and the Performance of Identity

Paloma Gay y Blasco

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781859732588
• eBook ISBN: 9781000181197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Social Sciences

Throughout the twentieth century, Spanish people have deployed conflicting sexual moralities in their struggle for political supremacy within the state. The Spanish Gypsies or Gitanos, who live at the very bottom of the Spanish socio-economic scale, have appropriated this concern with gender morality and, in the process, have reinvented themselves as the only honourable Spaniards. Although the Gitano gender ideology has a distinctively Spanish flavour, it revolves around a conceptualization of the female body that is radically different from that of other Spaniards. The subtle exploration of these acts of cultural invention is one of the original features of this important new ethnography. Another even more striking aspect of the work is the author's vision of the 'impermanent' nature of the Gitano social order and the absence of any representation of 'community' or 'society'. Unlike their non-Gypsy neighbours, Gitanos do not use concepts of tradition, territory or social harmony as bases for their singularity. Instead, they focus on the evaluation of personal moral performances in the present. In a cultural universe where all activities are markers of shared identity, and where personhood is always sexed, men and women continually enact the superiority of Gypsies over non-Gypsies. Through dress, manner and the management of emations, or at wedding rituals where the virginity of young brides is put to the test, the body works as the site of these processes.

Part I
Gypsies in Contemporary Spain

one
Introduction

My aim in this book is to explore some of the key processes through which the Spanish Gypsies or Gitanos construct their distinctive way of life and their understanding of themselves as a group different from the non-Gypsies - whom they call Payos.¹ In other words, this book represents an attempt to elucidate the way in which people who see themselves as living 'under siege', who have been oppressed and marginalized throughout five centuries, go on creating a lifestyle and a shared identity clearly separate from those of the dominant population among which they live,² My starting point is the fact that the Gitanos appear to reproduce their singularity without recourse to the usual anthropological prompts of attachment to land or territory, appeals to a shared past or a communal memory, or internal unity or cohesiveness in the present. A look at Gitano life thus immediately presents the observer with an apparent paradox: although the Gitanos have an extremely strong sense of themselves as a people, set apart from the non-Gypsies, they are not preoccupied with constructing a harmonious or united community. Rather, the opposite is closer to the truth: they seem intent on objectifying fragmentation and differences between themselves. The obvious conclusion is that, in the Gitano case, common identity is the main support of community - and the word 'community' in this context has to be carefully nuanced, as I explain below. In this book I ask where the Gitanos' sense of themselves as such is located, and how they construct it - that is, what the sources of Gitano distinctiveness are. One of my main premises is the awareness that analysing how the Gitanos conceptualize themselves as a group - and what kind of group they imagine themselves to be necessitates analysing their constructions of the person. The basis of the book is fifteen months of fieldwork carried out among the Gitanos of Jarana, a 'special Gitano neighbourhood' built by the State in the district of Villaverde Alto, on the southern periphery of Madrid.

Gitanos and Other `Damned Peoples'

Anthropologists and historians writing on the Gitanos portray them as descendants of the so called 'bands of Egyptians' that, according to written records, crossed the Pyrenees and arrived on the Peninsula in the early fifteenth century (Sánchez Ortega 1986: 18; San Román 1994). The general assumption is that groups as diverse as the Manouches, the Kalderash, the English Travellers and the Gitanos are in fact 'one people',³ the overall consensus being that they originally came from India. Okely (1983) is practically alone in having disputed this theory. More recently, Stewart has argued that what needs explanation is the 'persistence of cultural difference' between Gypsies and non-Gypsies, rather than the 'mere existence of foreign origins' (1997: 263).

In fact, there are wide variations among Gypsy groups - including the ways in which they construct their difference from the dominant populations and express their identity as Gypsies. While some have remained nomadic up to the present, others became sedentary decades or even centuries ago. Many speak one of the many Romany dialects but there are others - for example the Gitanos - who speak the language of the non-Gypsy peoples among whom they live.⁴ Some earn their living through 'typically' Gypsy activities - such as telling fortunes or collecting scrap - whereas others work in factories along non-Gypsies. Many uphold intricate pollution taboos, but some including the Gitanos - do not.⁵ Other important features, such as kinship and political organization, marriage forms, or religion, also vary significantly from one Gypsy group to the next. All Gypsies, however, elaborate on the contrast between themselves and the non-Gypsies and also share a) a peripheral or marginal status in relation to the non-Gypsies among whom they live; b) a preference to engage in economic activities over which they themselves exert control; and c) a lack of an elaborate social memory and of permanent, physical markers of Gypsy identity (see for example Sutherland 1975a; Stewart 1997; Okely 1983; Williams 1993a; Kaprow 1991). The chapters that follow have to be read with this combination of difference and similarity among Gypsy groups in mind.

Two main groups of Gypsies live in Spain: Kalderash Gypsies, known by the Gitanos as Húngaros (Hungarian) and by the Payos as Cígaros, who came to Spain from Eastern Europe in several migration waves during the nineteenth century (Mulcahy 1988), and Gitanos, who are themselves divided into various sub-units. San Román (1976: 60) and Ardevol (1986: 64) gather together Castilian Gitanos and Gitanos from Extremadura into a single category, and distinguish them from those from Andalucía, Catalonia, and from non-Catalan Gitanos who have migrated to that region during the second half of the twentieth century - known as Cafeletes. Their argument is that these groups differ in some aspects of their social and cultural organisations. In Jarana, the Gitanos uphold a somewhat different classification. They distinguish between Húngaros, Gitanos Castellanos (from Castile) - who are the majority of those in the neighbourhood - and Gitanos Extremeños (from Extremadura) - who are a very small minority in Jarana but live in other areas of Madrid in great numbers. At the same time they are aware of other Gitanos in other areas of Spain and believe that there are Gitanos in 'all the countries of the world' (en todos los países del mundo). Although they consider the Húngaros to be the 'truest Gitanos' (los Gitanos más de verdad) because they are nomadic and speak Romany, they see all of the different Gitano and non-Gitano Gypsy groups as being equally Gitano - equally part of the 'Gitano people' (el pueblo Gitano) - in spite of the fact that they may have different 'customs' (costumbres). This book deals only with the Castilian Gitanos of Jarana - more specifically, with the ways in which they construct 'the Gitano people' as an imagined community and come to see themselves as part of it.

It is important to stress that the Gitanos are not the only minority of local origin in Spain - by 'of local origin' I mean historically established in the country, in contrast with recent Latin American, Caribbean, North African and Filipino immigrants. In fact, the Gitanos are considered by historians and anthropologists alike to be just one of several pueblos malditos ('damned peoples') – 'marginal populations considered by their neighbours with aversion' (Cátedra Tomás 1991: 662). These are the Maragatos of León (muleteers and cloth traders), the Vaqueiros de Alzada from Asturias and the Pasiegos from Santander (both transhumant cattle herders), and the Chuetas from Mallorca (descendants of Jewish conversos, converts to Christianity) (Tax Freeman 1979: 223–45; Cátedra Tomás 1989 and 1991; Laub 1991). As in the case of the Gitanos, the Spanishness of these minorities is questioned by other Spaniards: Maragatos, Pasiegos and Vaqueiros are frequently said to be of Moorish descent, and Chuetas are thought and think themselves to be descendants of conversos. What all these minorities share, apart from specialized and - except for the Chuetas - marginal occupations, is a perceived inability to prove their pureza de sangre (purity of blood), their undisputed descent from old Christian stock (cristiano viejo). Maragatos, Pasiegos, Vaqueiros and Chuetas, however, are different from the Gitanos in that they are found only in highly localized areas, in that there are very few of them, and in that many Spanish people are not even aware of their existence. They only play the role of 'the Other' for small groups of Spaniards, and their position vis-à-vis those Spaniards is tied up with the geography and particular history of the areas where they live.

On the other hand the Gitanos, who live throughout Spain, both in the cities and in the countryside, have come to epitomise Spanishness outside Spain. Take the flamenco, or the image of the black-eyed Gitana that appears in the wrapping of hotel soap, wearing carnations in her hair and red flouncy skirts, and playing the castanets. To many foreigners, this is Spain. Or take the following statement, from John Hooper's popular book, The New Spaniards: discussing the strength of Spanish coffee, he attributes it to the Spaniards' 'seemingly instinctive enthusiasm for whatever is bold, strong and decisive', which 'has bedevilled their history, turning it into a succession of abrupt changes in direction' (1995:197). The Spaniards, according to Hooper, practice the 'cult of excess' (1995: 196). Spanishness and Gypsyness - irrationality, passion, mystery, honour - definitely overlap in popular, non-Spanish representations of Spain. And the Spaniards are well aware of this fact. One of the best film directors of the Francoist period, Luis García Berlanga, produced a satire of Spanish-American relations in the post-war era, Bienvenido Mr Marshall, telling the story of a Castilian village that disguises itself as an Andalusian village - full of Gypsy dancers and flamenco singers - in the hope of pleasing the American representatives of the Marshall Plan and obtaining in return something for each of the villagers - a trumpet for one, a pair of oxen for another and so on.

At the same time, non-Gypsy Spaniards are careful to differentiate between themselves and the Gitanos. The Castilian villagers who dressed up as Gypsies in Bienvenido Mr Marshall were acting a role, catering for American preconceptions. In his analysis of school children's attitudes towards the Gitanos, Calvo Buezas (1990) makes clear that the Gitanos play an undisputed star role in the Spanish communal imagination as the embodiment of all that is evil and wrong. Payos are keen to state that the Gitanos are a group apart, clearly different from, worse than, and even inferior to the rest of the Spaniards. To start with, Payos portray the Gitanos as having a different physique 'dark skin and black and greasy hair' (Calvo Buezas: 247) - or of belonging to a different race. Secondly, the Gitanos are said to have different customs, values, language, attitudes and lifestyle - more often than not the 'wrong' customs, values, language, attitudes and lifestyle. They are dancers and singers by nature, and they put great stress on family ties - positive features - but they are also poor, lazy and dirty, and many are thieves or - worse - drug dealers. In current use, the word Gitano works as an insult. In the words of a schoolchild from Andalusia, 'the Gitanos who live in this village, I don't mean to imply that they are the same as us ... most people say that if they are Gitanos, then they are not like us' (Calvo Buezas: 291).

Gypsies in Madrid: A `Special Gitano Neighbourhood'

In March 1992 I began fieldwork in Villaverde Alto, a district in the south of Madrid with a large Gypsy population. Social workers from the Consorcio - the Consortium for the Resettlement of Madrid's Marginal Population - had suggested that I base myself in Jarana, a housing estate built by the local authorities in 1989, designed to fulfil the 'special needs' of particularly 'marginalized' or 'backward' Gitanos (los Gitanos más marginales, más atrasados). Physically demarcated and isolated from the rest of Villaverde Alto, Jarana was a ghetto even in name: when it was first built a huge placard was placed at the entrance to the estate which read 'Colony for Marginal Population' (Colonia Para Población Marginal). At the beginning of 1992, while the 'problem' of Gitano drug dealing was receiving peak attention in the national media, my contacts in the Consorcio considered Jarana the safest Gypsy settlement in Madrid: the Gitanos who lived there had themselves made it a 'law' that no drugs were to be sold inside the neighbourhood. I was told that there would be no Payo addicts coming for their daily doses, less need for secrecy in the part of the Gitanos, and overall a more secure environment for a Payo woman and a more friendly disposition towards an inquisitive anthropologist.

Gitanos have been living in Villaverde Alto since the 1950s when they came to Madrid from villages in Castile and Extremadura as part of the massive rural-urban exodus that swept across Spain in the late post-war period. The original shanty-town was replaced in the early 1960s by what was then called an UVA or Unidad Vecinal de Absorción (Neighbourhood Absorption Unit): a 'colony' of one-floor houses inhabited by 3000 rural migrants, Payos and Gitanos. Villaverde Alto expanded from this first nucleus, partly through government initiatives and partly through private investments. By the late 1980s the UVA had deteriorated so much that the Consorcio and the local authorities pulled it down and built two new housing estates. One of them is Jarana. The other is located in Villaverde Alto itself: it consists of standard blocks of flats occupied mainly by Payos.⁶

Today Villaverde Alto is very similar to some of the other working-class areas of the south of Madrid - Orcasitas, Villaverde Bajo, Leganés, Vallecas and so on. Much of the housing in these districts is provided by the State, and standard of living is low by comparison to that of the rest of the population of the city. It is there that the huge increase in drug addiction and spread of AIDS that has taken place over the last ten to fifteen years have had their greatest impact. Levels of unemployment and conflict are also very high - at the time of my fieldwork, Villaverde Alto had one of the highest numbers of inhabitants with criminal records of the city.⁷ Lastly, these zones have received the bulk of the influx of poor Latin American and North African migrants that have arrived in Madrid over the last ten years.⁸ Intense social work, commissioned by the State and by the Catholic Church, is carried out in all these areas.

By building Jarana the Consorcio wanted to resettle part of what it considered to be a particularly problematic 'marginal population'. This referred mainly to Gitano families who did not wish to live in flats, who were considered by the Consorcio social workers too 'ignorant' (ignorantes) and 'uncivilized' (incivilizados) to do so, or who were thought to require specific kinds of housing because of their economic activities - some of them are scrap collectors or fruit and vegetable vendors who, it was argued, needed space to keep their produce. Like most Gitanos in Madrid, the inhabitants of Jarana - Payos and Gitanos - had lived in shantytowns or low-quality temporary council housing in various areas of the city, and had already gone through several government-directed resettlements.

Writing in 1986, Juan Montes, the architect who designed Jarana, could foresee some of the negative features that would eventually come to characterize the neighbourhood. He explained how the wish to provide for the needs of those Gitano groups that, in the eyes of the social services, 'displayed evident signs of mis-adaptation to normal urban areas' would mean that

the neighbourhood will be specifically planned for Gitanos ... Secondly, the people who already live in areas likely to be chosen will oppose radically the building of this neighbourhood in their vicinity. This increases the risk of creating a ghetto far away from the nearest populated zones. Lastly, it often happens that this kind of neighbourhood is programmed with a minimum of resources ... the results are often disastrous: the deficient construction, together with the Gitanos' misuse of facilities and the lack of social services and of adequate conservation soon turn these neighbourhoods into de facto shanty towns (1986: 162).⁹

He thus recommended a location where the Gitanos would have easy access to public services, and suggested the construction of a social assistance centre and a kindergarten. The opposition of the population of Villaverde Alto to the proposed settlement was not strong in comparison with the reception that plans for similar neighbourhoods were given in other areas of the city, such as the nearby Villaverde Bajo where there were massive public demonstrations in 1991. However, many of Montes' predictions have come true. At the time of my fieldwork Jarana was very well demarcated spatially and architecturally. It was clearly separated from the main body of Villaverde Alto, where the nearest shops and public facilities are located: on foot it could only be reached through an open and often muddy field or by walking along a road that links Villaverde to the motorways that surround Madrid. Sixty-five of the eighty houses in the neighbourhood were occupied by Gitanos, nine by Payos, and six by mixed families: out of the four hundred in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part I: Gypsies in Contemporary Spai
• Part II: The Performance of Morality: Dual Moral Standard
• Part III: The Performance of Morality: Patrilinearity, Conflict and Masculinit
• References
• Index