Gypsies

Wandering the streets of the world there is a people, a lineage, a community similar to itself but at the same time untied, a vindicator of its own culture but under innumerable names, whose fame is overshadowed by prejudice and by the ill-considered reputation of those who judge it from the outside. Multiple nationalities, but a single great story that unites people distant from each other, a story made of travel, passion, suffering, adventure, discrimination, a story that could describe the existence of any human being.

Linguistic and philological studies have identified in many Romansh words

a derivation from Persian, Greek, Kurdish and Armenian, revealing the migratory route traveled by these people from India and Pakistan in a period of time ranging from 700 to 1200 AD, generating the diaspora from the Indian continent of an independently developed people. Various historical documents written by medieval scholars describe the Indian "dom" as a low-ranking caste formed by people engaged in the activities of scavengers, musicians, singers, jugglers, iron workers and seasonal trades, and ready to escape as crushed by the caste social system that was in force at that time.

1. Group of Spanish gypsies. Andalusia, a region in the south of Spain, has for centuries been home to the largest "Rom" community in the Iberian peninsula and, probably, the place that more than any other in Europe has allowed the community to integrate better. The narrow traditional values of gypsies have managed to fit in with the customs of the Andalusian villages, much more effectively than what happened in the large urban centers of the north of the country. Flamenco, which became a symbol of Spanish folklore, developed between the provinces of Seville, Cádiz, Cordoba, Jerez and Malaga, originating as an emotional outlet of the gypsy minority in Andalusia.

The first evidence of the presence of the Rom people in Eastern Europe dates back to the 10th century, thanks to the writings of pilgrims who crossed the area to arrive in Israel, who documented their roots in the territories corresponding to Turkey, to Greece and Armenia. The chronicles of the period, moreover, told of the presence of the Athinganoi, a heretical sect settled in rural villages that practiced magic cults and divination of pagan origin, and sometimes called them as gypsies, sometimes as cygany, or even gitanos: all labels that still erroneously accompany the Rom people today, who have been thus deprived of the power to decide how to be called.

In reality, for centuries the Rom had hybridized with the people of these places, even if most of them continued to move, and some of the most important testimonies emerged from the merchants of the Venetian Maritime Republic who in the fourteenth century traveled in Asia Minor: many writings portrayed the Roma as a cursed people, who did not stay in the same place for more than a month, perpetually forced to wander. Since about 1100 A.D. their migration had already risen through the Balkans, where currently resides the largest European community, in Romania and Bulgaria; subsequently their branches touched the crown of the European continent and, today, virtually every nation has within it strains of this ethnic minority.

2. Gypsies ready for deportation to Nazi concentration camps. During the "Final Solution" put in place by the Third Reich to decimate the Jews, the Rom and Sinti peoples were mixed with the Israelites, communists and political opponents of the regime, as they were thought to be the inferior race, although for the vast majority of the German population it did not represent a direct danger to the country. In total, 500,000 innocent people were murdered; German physician and psychologist Robert Ritter was one of the most influential theorists of the race and called the Roma "a minority composed of a dangerous mixture of degenerate races, made up of asocial and criminal people". In the Romansh language the extermination is called "Porajmos", that is "great devouring".

Over time, this migration has not only been the result of the proud nomadic nature of the Roma, but has all too often been forced by persecution and extermination, as they almost always belonged to the last level of the social hierarchy, and their ghettoization in the peripheral areas of the inhabited areas has always generated the illusion that they were an excess people, dangerous and to be avoided.In reality the objective fact that emerges from an external observation is simply their attitude of family closure, moved by an ancient patriarchal tradition that sees them united through a strong bond of blood and gene.In spite of everything, many of them now live in a permanent way in many of the inhabited states, and most of them have citizenship.

3. Flamenco dancer in a work by Argentinian artist Fabian Pérez. The word flamenco alludes to the Arabic words "flang" (peasant) and "mengu" (errant), and was synonymous with gypsy in Spain in 1700. Initially danced and sung melancholy without the use of musical instruments, as the only accompaniment had the clapping of hands. In the nineteenth century it was spread across the peninsula by gypsies and between 1860 and 1910 it was recognized by the people of the place and converted into the most beloved musical genre by the Spanish public.