The Gypsies of Spain

Spain is the only country in the world to have its own genuine Gypsies—the Gitanos—who never migrate beyond its borders. Many never roam beyond the ghettos into which they have been driven. If the Rom Gypsies are “forever wild,” the Gitanos are, by contrast, “the trapped ones.” After centuries of relentless persecution, it is a wonder that the Gitanos have survived at all. But they have retained an amazing resilience and have continued to uphold their own unique life-style. The bursts of reckless unconcern and tempestuous abandon that characterize the Gitanos have found an outlet in their Flamenco singing, dancing, and guitar playing. Their words are evocative, indirect, disarmingly illusive—full of things that are not said and revelations that have never come. This they voice with unparalleled intensity, with a harsh, wildly exuberant quality that no one else can match. It is what Federico: Garcia Lorca meant when he said: “They make their voices sound like gushing blood.” Journeying through meadows, wastelands, deep canyons, wide gorges, caves, cities, festivals, settlements, plains, salt marshes, and the twilights of southern Spain—Jan Yoors and André A. López have come to know these enigmatic people. And here, have captured their quintessence in stunning photographs and text that are as evocative, flamboyant, and earthy as the Gitanos themselves. The Gitanos—Spain has branded them “the most despised and haughty of races.” Victims of prejudice, persecution and unjust portrayals, they are difficult to find, difficult to approach, and almost impossible to get to know. But Jan Yoors, who has lived on and off with travelling Gypsies (the Rom) since he was twelve and was even adopted by them, has a very special way about him: a warm, searching personality; a keen sense of observation, a lyrical genius. He was accepted by the Gitanos into their homes, into their lives, their thoughts, and their art. In this book, Yoors takes you on his travels through southern Spain, from squalid slums to the wealthier apayado (assimilated) areas, from the cities to the wastelands—intimately acquainting you with the vivacious, infuriating, and irresistible, down-trodden Gitanos. He unearths every aspect of their life— their work, their problems, their history, their feelings and attitudes, their weaknesses and gifts, their spirit. We meet a five-year-old girl who improvises a raised stage on the back of a truck to dance, and her grandmother, who follows her, moving hands and arms with the sinuous beauty of a swan and the swiftness of a hawk, then bursting loose in a climax of rage; we meet the relatives of Carmen Amaya, the much admired and internationally known dancer; and a young, bewitchingly beautiful, woman who directs a flow of obscenities at a passing stranger —with a bright engaging smile; and also El Maestro, an old man, who upon being awakened, electrifies the atmosphere with a magnificent song of solitude. “Anyway there is no happiness, only happy men,” he sings. The Gypsies of Spain is an exciting experience—not just because it is a sensitively drawn. portrait of a little-known people, but because it taps continually, as the Gitanos do themselves, the small truths and inner stirrings of being alive, even if there is, as they put it, “a shadow hanging over you.” Jan Yoors, who spent a decade with Gypsy tribes as a youth before World War II, lives in New York where he maintains a studio as an internationally known tapestry weaver. He is the author of the widely hailed books The Gypsies and Crossing. Andre A. Lopez, an unusually sensitive young photographer, spent several months with the Spanish Gypsies to obtain the pictures for this book.