Gypsy integration: Spain shows the way

But within a few weeks, Romero said her student, Emilia Jimenez Gonzalez, knew all there was to know about cuticles and French tips. She was so good and so nice that Romero went a step further than required and persuaded a friend to give Jimenez a job.
“She proved herself to be a real professional,” said Romero, who had never gotten to know a Gypsy before.

Throughout Europe, Gypsies (who are often called Roma, but not in Spain where the Spanish word for gypsy, ‘gitano,’ is uttered with pride) frequently survive in isolated encampments, reviled as beggars and petty thieves. In some Eastern European countries, they face such deep prejudice that they are chased off municipal buses, and in school their children are relegated to classes for the mentally handicapped.

Even in Western Europe, France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, could count on shoring up his popularity when he decided to deport thousands of Roma to Romania this year.
But things are different in Spain.

Here, more than 30 years of government programmes to help Gypsies have begun to show signs of success. Virtually all young Gypsy children are in elementary school. Nearly half of their parents own their own homes. And like Jimenez, many are holding down mainstream jobs, moving away from more traditional Gypsy livelihoods like selling cattle and other goods.

Spain has become so successful, in fact, that it now serves as a model for other European countries, including Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. Some experts say Spain’s secret is that it has concentrated on practical issues, such as access to housing and jobs. In contrast, they say, some European institutions have concentrated too much on issues of prejudice and political rights.

“Perhaps as a result, a lot of money has been spent in other parts of Europe to integrate Gypsies but with few results,” said Isidro Rodriguez, director of Fundacion Secretariado Gitano, a state-financed organisation that administers the Acceder, or “to access,” job programme that helped Jimenez. “The Spanish approach has really been different because it has been first and foremost about improving living standards.”

One 2009 study conducted for the Fundacion Secretariado Gitano looked at the housing of Gypsies in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain, and found that overall a third lived in substandard housing, mostly apartments lacking heat, hot water or electricity.

But in some countries, the situation was much worse. In Portugal, for instance, nearly a third of the Roma population still lived in shacks.

In Spain, 92 per cent of Gypsies live in standard apartments or houses, according to the same study. Another survey, in 2005, found that 50 percent were formally employed, government officials said.

Gypsies, who originally came from India, have been in Spain since the 15th century. Their traditions, such as their contributions to flamenco, have become part of Spain’s identity.

Yet, until recently they faced persecution, sometimes intended to drive them out of the country, sometimes intended to force assimilation. At one point, they were required by law to marry non-Gypsies; at another, they were forbidden to gather in groups of more than four.

Under Franco’s dictatorship, Gypsies lived in fear of the military police, or Guardia Civil, which often brutally broke up their encampments and forced them to keep moving around the country.