Ok, here it goes my politically incorrect post.

I have been grown all my life to have respect for other cultures and races, and I have just come to a conclusion about gypsies (gitanos).

Let's make some questions first: In a country as Spain where the migration fluxes have been huge throughout its history (romans, greeks, phoenicians, celts, visigoths, sudaneses, berebers, arabs,...) the general spaniard seems to have blood of all these races so, why didn't the gypsies mixed with the rest of the people as the other cultures/races if they have been here for centuries? Curious, don't you think?

Now come my experience and that of my family with gypsies. When my parents had no money at all, and were working hard to pay their house, a gypsie woman came to our door. "Give me an egg". My mother, her back aching of cleaning the house (it was new, and obviusly very dirty) answered very well intentioned: "Ok, I don't have an egg, but you can help me to clean the floor and I will pay you for it". The answer: "Oh noooo, I want an egg".

Next. My father was at some time of his life in charge of a factory. As a way to integrate and help two gypsie men, he inocently offered them a job, disregarding the voices who told him not to do it. How these two men payed him? At the first glance he catch them stealing some steel pieces of the factory. When he asked them what were they doing their response was to menace him with a knife.

Some blocks away from my house the council built a 12 store building which were given to gypsies who lived in "chabolas" (little light houses made of plastics, wood and other building pieces). The bargain was: The council bulldozed their chabolas, and give a flat for free as compensation. What did the majority of them did? They literally destroyed the apartments (taking off the pipes, the electric instalation, the furniture,...) then sold them, and then build another chabola in the base of the block.

Countless times I have seen these and other ways in which our society tried to integrate these people, and their only response have been parasite the society. The spaniards work, and what the gypsies do is make drugs traffic, steal, rob, injure people (even children), sell newspapres on the traffic-lights, "clean" the glasses of the car and, in extremely rare cases, earn money singing or dancing flamenco. You won't see a gypsie working as a laborers, farmers, or even engineers, medics, etc (their own parents don't usually want to send their children to the schools).

Conclusion: I don't think the gypsies want to integrate in the spanish society nor in any other civilized society. We are not the only country with the gypsie problem. Unfortunately, if we didn't have enough of them, we have absorbed a great amount of romanian (from Romania) gypsies, and portuguese gypsies (they will probably think Spain is a bargain...).

The great majority of them want to continue living as they have done for centuries: parasiting the rest of the society.

I prefer a thousand times a southamerican, an eastern-european, a center-african or even a moroccian before a gypsie.

Call this racism. It may be or may be not, but the facts are there.

Fernando

Roe,

He isn't certain which barrio, but it happened somewhere within a mile and a half of Deusto station before 8 AM. I don't think he knew one barrio from another.

Wolf

The gitanos lifestyle is built upon making money off of outsiders, it is very regulated and organized. Gitanos who go to make a normal life are ostracized from their community or worse - it´s like some cult. Children raised this way have no concept of another way of life or that they are parasites on 'normal' society. My policy with gitanos, scientologists, or other such folks, I avoid them completely.

Fernando writes: You're being generous, Fernando: The first things gypsies are taught is how to steal, and whom they should target for the highest probability of getting something of value. 12 and 13-year old gypsy children are sent out to steal under the watchful eyes of their teacher. When they have attained adequate status, they are on their own. Gypsies live apart from civilized society although most horse-drawn Caravans have been replaced with motorized 'vans' or house trailers.

Gypsies are the same all over the world. Are you aware that there is a Gypsy society in Brooklyn, N.Y. with its own 'King?' Gypsies don't want to integrate into any society. They want to continue living the way they have for centuries. Even Adolph Hitler, who wanted to exterminate the gypsies, doesn't seem to have had much success along those lines ...

I think it's very difficult to talk about this without studying it a little bit deeply.
Gypsies came to Spain in XVIth century with their own kings, laws, culture ... they had a nomad culture and probably that's one of the reasons of why there have had so many conflicts with them.
The Spanish Kings during all this century have had different policies against them (more commonly) or in pro of them with no success.
I believe all the facts told here and many more like them, it's something common. It's not difficult to see them driving without licence, or without car insurance (compulsary in Spain), or selling fruit or clothes in the street avoiding the taxes, sometimes stolen things... but also many of them sell the fruit legally in Council markets or make bussiness with chatarra ... also many of them are studying and really want to work.
There are towns, usually small or medium, where the gypsies live with payos with no problems and other places where there are conflicts.
I think the new generations are each time more integrated as there have had plans to integrate them in the school when it's more important that all the races know each other.
Now, I think we have had a new problem with the arrival of the Rumanian gypsies, as it looks that all the efforts have become nothing.
Well, I think they're not victims of racism, but that good people pay for the bad people,we have all to work more and better for the integration.

I have to agree with most of the earlier posters, avoid the Gypsies like the plauge. I have to disagree with the idea that they are a just a group marginalized folks. They gitanos have nothing in common with African Americans, absolutely nothing. Nearly all black Americans value eduaction and hard honest work, the gitanos are only motivated by crime and ignorance. As has been mentioned, most gypsies do not want to send thier children to school. They prefer that their kids learn to pick pockets and sell drugs.

Of course, we have to remember that women have zero rights in the gypsy community, their parents elect their husbands when they are about 15-16yrs. By the time a gypsy girl is 30, she normaly has 6 or 7 kids. Of course they all seem to have a baby in their arms in order to con people about needing milk money for their family. How many skinny Gypsies have you seen?

When they move into a building and away from the chabolas, as Fernando mentioned, they destroy the building. It is not uncommon to find chickens, rabitts, and of course mounds of feces in what used to be a nice piso before the gitanos moved in. They don´t pay taxes nor the community fees. If you own a piso in a bilding, I garauntee you that the value of your piso will decline greatly the moment you see 'La Farola' sales team move in. The decline has nothing to do with their race, but as a result of their behaviour.

Please do not try to compare American race relations with the realtion between 'pallos' and gitanos. If you are trusting person who believes that the gypsy are a well intentioned misunderstood group, you can learn the hard way, just like Fernando´s father.

Ja ja - "la Farola". Everytime they come near with that thing I just say "No thanks, I don't want a newspaper today." They seem to become flustered as I treat them like they are trying to sell me something... the only response is the "por favor soy refugiado de la Bosnia" subway chant.

And are those babies doled out in the morning?

"Alright, Lola, take baby #5 and head for Pl. Callao. Majda, you've got #8."

"But #8 craps all day and is fat! I want #6!"

"We sold #6 last week though to Sudanese slavers. Sorry."

...and so on. I should have made movies.

We had a "La Farola" incident in Santiago that was pretty funny. We just looked at the gypsy girl and told her, in English, "what? what is that? Is that a newspaper? Who wrote it? what do you have there? aren't you a little young to be selling papers?" I've never seen a more frustrated and puzzled little girl in my life. Her little brother tried the same thing with the "la Farola gum" and met with the same degree of frustration.

On another note, there is a gypsy king here in Los Angeles as well, probably like the guy in NYC mentioned earlier. I understand from friends who've seen the "palace" that the beggin' business is fairly lucrative...

The sad thing is, that as someone said, the majority ruin the chances of those few that want to break out and be productive. The fact that their community ostracizes them for wanting to make something of themselves is even more disheartening.

I do have one question: When I was in Spain back in the late 80's, I had heard that the girls/women wear skirts all the time to allow daddy "easy access". That sounds repulsive but also a little "far-fetched", nevertheless it is possible. Does anyone have any thoughts on that?

I have to SO VEHEMENTLY disagree with the previous posts that pigeonhole gypsies/Roma as criminals, parasites, and even practitioners of incest. First of all, I think the parallel between the Roma and African-Americans (and any other immigrant group that is readily identifiable because of skin color, dress, or language) is an apt one. I'm not necessarily talking about NOW in the US, where progress has been made (though not enough yet).

Historically, though, the same kinds of language you all are using about the Gypsies have been used against African-Americans and other "different" groups..."they don't want to work," "they are parasitic," "they don't take care of the places they live," "if we give them some help, they reject it or ruin it." We've all heard that before, haven't we, about groups that are different?

The Irish were called drunks, the Italians were called criminals, in the early part of the 1900s in the US. People assumed, based on admittedly negative interactions with individuals from these groups, that the stereotypes they extracted from those interactions applied to EVERYONE in that group. It's SO EASY to do this, and (in my opinion) so dangerous! It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, after all...look at what we still see among young African-American men! The mortality rate is high, many express hopelessness about their future prospects, many father illegitimate children and live lives dependent on crime. These things are ALL LINKED!!

People have often said that African-Americans have a desire to remain marginalized too, that they don't want to become integrated and don't want to participate in "civil society." Those people are mixing up two things, though...the desire to retain culturally-important customs and practices DOES NOT exclude a desire to see your children educated, to hope that each successive generation will do better than the one that came before. There is a biologically ingrained and evolutionarily important desire to have your children and your children's children be more successful than you are. We see this in the reproductive strategies used by EVERY animal, not just humans. Enhancing reproductive fitness, in humans, means acquiring wealth, education, and health. That's just the way it is. If we want to give our children an evolutionary advantage (and all animals do), we don't want to see them locked up in jail, denied medical access, or illiterate. To say that Roma mothers and fathers WANT to live these lives is ridiculous.

Pointing out that women are oppressed gives an interesting twist to this...evolutionary biologists and evolutionary psychologists are learning that societies that allow male domination of women's reproductive decisionmaking often tend to exhibit more violence, more individualistic tendencies, etc. All of this is seen to some extent in the mainstream Western societies too, but among marginalized groups, this tendency may be even more apparent.

If a group is mired in hopelessness for generation after generation, denied access to healthcare and education, denied access to occupations that will result in greater wealth and prosperity, it's no surprise that many turn to crime. And there is still a debate about the percentage of crimes that are committed by Roma and other immigrant or non-native groups--but even assuming that they do commit more crimes, on average, than native groups, what does that tell us? That they WANT to be criminals? That they prefer to raise their children in filth? Or that the pervasive hopelessness has sapped the energy to keep trying?

So go ahead and call me a Pollyanna, or a flaming liberal, or whatever...I still think that, despite the likely truth of the incidents you describe, to label this group in the way that you're doing is to predestine every Roma baby born today to a life of marginalization, poor or nonexistent education, and (quite possibly) crime.

And as for the suggestion that "daddy wants easy [sexual] access" to his children, that almost doesn't deserve a response. The incest taboo is present in every known culture, again for important evolutionary reasons. To suggest that a group engages in culturally-sanctioned incest is another attempt to suggest that a group is less than human. The incest rumor has surfaced with respect to African Americans, too--and Hitler lobbed charges of incest against Jews as well. And listen to the comments of many "far Right" commentators about how gays advocate incest. As if ANY group needed to try to overcome THAT rumor in addition to all the other nonsense that people believe about them!! To give that kind of rumor credence is absurd. I would be willing to bet that the rates of incest among Gypsies are comparable to those found among just about any other population in the world.

I wear skirts too. So do many Spanish women. We're not sleeping with our dads and brothers.

Tarabv,
I think you are a great woman with very high expectations.
I am not very sure how long you have lived next to "gitanos". I used to think like you, and I was wrong. I lived next to gitanos for a long time and I don't have a single good experience with them. I have to agree with the rest of the posts.
They don't want to be part of the society or follow the rules, you cannot help someone that doesn't want to be helped.
Nuria