Between myth and reality, it is said that a nomadic people entered the Peninsula from North Africa at the beginning of the 15th century, after stopping in France, following a long march that sank into the mists of time. Different Aragonese and Castilian towns gave residence to their patriarchs under the fanciful belief that it was a town that fled from the Grand Turk and that, unable to sufficiently defend the holy faith, the penance of traveling the world until the end of days had been imposed on him by the Pope.
This is what the authorities of Jaén believed in November 1462, the date on which they entertained an individual who presented himself, together with a retinue of one hundred people, with food, drink and a bed. the Count of Egypt. To these first groups were added the Grecians, pilgrims who penetrated the Mediterranean shore in the eighties due to the fall of Constantinople. Both continued to wander throughout the peninsula, being well received in a friendly manner until at least 1493, the year in which a group of Egyptians arrived in Madrid, where the Council agreed “…to give alms to those of Egypt because at the request of the Villa passed ahead, ten reales, to avoid the damage that could be done by three hundred people who were coming…».
Even today there is no consensus on the place of origin of this people scattered throughout Europe, but from the linguistic point of view there is evidence of a common root of their original language with Sanskrit, so that the origin of the Rom people can be established. in the northwestern part of India. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, the invasions of the Turkish and Mongol armies forced the settled Gypsy tribes to take different paths: the Ben group it would travel through Syria to the Near East and across the Mediterranean to the Nile Valley; the group of the Phen through Armenia to Byzantium. It was then that the first arrivals to the Peninsula began to be documented, first as princes, then as dangerous foreigners.
From fostering to persecution
By the end of that century, nobody considered the Egyptians to be ragged aristocrats anymore, but rather they saw in these nomadic groups the cause of endless public order problems. The Catholic Monarchs demanded that the gypsies come to the cities and punished those young people who wandered with jail terms and forced conscription. A pragmatic of these Monarchs in 1499 established that «if they were found or taken, without office, without lords, together… that they give each one a hundred lashes for the first time and perpetually banish them from these kingdoms, and for the second time that they cut off their ears, and they are in the chain and they take them to exile as it is said…». Such threats were of little use to a group that would not stop growing in the following centuries, just the opposite of Jewish and Muslim communities.
Painting of a Spanish gypsy family.
What no one freed them from is becoming the scapegoat of the authorities. The proliferation of vagabonds and bad people in the cities placed the gypsies in the focus in the mid-18th century. In the eyes of the population and the authorities, the way of life of this ethnic group a challenge to the laws against nomadism. Legislation against Egyptians was tightened in 1745 with a royal decree that extended the death penalty, until then reserved for “squad” gypsies caught with firearms, as well as those “found with or without weapons outside the limits of your neighborhood.”
“Let it be lawful to make weapons over them and take their lives,” the text pointed out. Not satisfied with this, at the height of his power, the Marquis of Ensenada launched a large raid to “exterminate such an evil race,” as he defined this ethnic group in his letters, despite reports that assured him that, to then, most gypsies It was already a resident and in the process of integrating into their communities.
«After the reduction of the cavalry is concluded, the extinction of the gypsies will be ordered»
The La Rioja minister convinced Fernando VI of his particular final solution: “After the reduction of the cavalry is concluded, the extinction of the gypsies will be ordered.” The plan would consist of first taking a census of the gypsies and, after locating them in each of the towns, arresting them on the same day at the same time throughout the length and breadth of the peninsula. Thus, the intention was to separate husbands and wives to “prevent generation”, that is, to separate men and women so that they would not procreate. In addition, boys over the age of seven would be taken away from their mothers to be sent with the men. Ferdinand VI authorized the raid in the summer of 1749, when some 9,000 gypsies were detained on the same day. Many managed to slip away through the protection of nobles and ecclesiastics, while others planted armed resistance or fled into the mountains.
Ensenada asked to intensify the persecution of those who fled, but the overcrowding in the houses of mercy and the imminence of riots frustrated his plans. Not even he knew what to do with the gypsies once they were arrested: force them to work in public works and offices in perpetuity? Expel them from the country? Take them to America so that, as many defended, they would be assimilated by the Indians? In the end, he rectified, but he did not solve the problem generated by his confinement.
It was necessary to wait until 1763, with the accession to the throne of Carlos III, so that legal compensation could be reached for the situation of the gypsies in the form of a general pardon. The resistance of the imprisoned gypsies, who mostly refused to work in the arsenals, and the economic cost of the operations discouraged the following generations of ministers from resorting to new raids, although there was no shortage of other reforming ministers, such as the count of Arandawho continued to defend the “annihilation” of this ethnic group years later as a method to cure the nation’s problems.