page_title: Human rights in Spain
section_title: Roma
hierarchical_section_title: Human rights in Spain / Roma
caption_attribution_description: English: Excerpt of map depicting Cañada Real Galiana, Valdemingómez district, near the Valdemingómez waste and recycling facilities. Long grey strip along Cañada Real Galiana roadway denotes the 16 kilometre-long, 75 metre-wide shantytown; square and rectangular outlines represent dimensions of surveyed buildings within the settlement. The narrow width of the settlement is due to the dimensions of the legally protected transhumance pathway on which it is situated.
context_page_description: Human rights in Spain are set out in the 1978 Spanish constitution. Sections 6 and 7 guarantees the right to create and operate political parties and trade unions so long as they respect the Constitution and the law.
context_section_description: Environmental racism has been documented in Spain, with North African and Romani ethnic communities being particularly affected, as well as migrant agricultural workers from throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Southeast Europe. As of 2007, there were an estimated 750,000 Romani (primarily Gitano Romani) living in Spain. According to the "Housing Map of the Roma Community in Spain, 2007", 12% of Romani live in substandard housing, while 4%, or 30,000 people, live in slums or shantytowns; furthermore, 12% resided in segregated settlements. According to the Roma Inclusion Index 2015, the denial of environmental benefits has been documented in some communities, with 4% of Romani in Spain not having access to running water, and 9% not having access to electricity.
  Efforts to relocate shantytowns (chabolas), which according to a 2009 report by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights were disproportionately inhabited by Romani persons, gained momentum in the late 1980s and 1990s. These initiatives were ostensibly designed to improve Romani living conditions, yet also had the purpose of being employed to vacate plots of real estate for development. In the words of a 2002 report on the situation of Romani in Spain, "thousands of Roma live in transitional housing, without any indication of when the transition period will end," a situation which has been attributed to the degradation of many transitional housing projects into ghettoes. In the case of many such relocations, Romani people have been moved to the peripheries of urban centers, often in environmentally problematic areas. In the case of Cañada Real Galiana, diverse ethnic groups including non-Romani Spaniards and Moroccans have been documented as experiencing issues of environmental injustice alongside Romani communities.
  In 2002, 16 Romani families in El Cascayu were relocated under a transitional housing scheme to what has been described by the organization SOS Racismo as a discriminatory, isolated, and environmentally marginalized housing location. According to SOS Racismo,
  ... the last housing units built within [the] eradication of marginalization plan in El Cascayu, where 16 families will be re-housed, is a way of chasing these families out of the city. They will live in a place surrounded by a 'sewer river,' a railroad trail, an industrial park and a highway. So far away from education centres, shops, recreational places and without public transport, it will be physically difficult for them to get out of there.
  On the outskirts of Madrid, 8,600 persons inhabit the informal settlement of Cañada Real Galiana, also known as La Cañada Real Riojana or La Cañada Real de las merinas. It constitutes the largest shantytown in Western Europe. The settlement is located along 16 kilometres of a 75 metre-wide, 400 kilometre-long environmentally protected transhumance trail between Getafe and Coslada, part of a 125,000 kilometre network of transhumance routes throughout Spain. Certain areas of the unplanned and unauthorized settlement are economically affluent, working-class, or middle-class and are viewed as desirable areas for many (particularly Moroccan immigrants who have faced discrimination in the broader Spanish rental market). However, much of the Cañada Real Galiana is subject to severe environmental racism, particularly in the Valdemingómez district of the settlement.
caption: Map excerpt of Valdemingómez district, Cañada Real Galiana, Madrid. The long grey strip along Cañada Real Galiana roadway and transhumance trail denotes the 16 kilometre-long, 75 metre-wide shantytown where 8,600 persons reside. Rectangular shapes denote structures.
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