page_title: Gitanos
section_title: Migration to Spain
hierarchical_section_title: Gitanos / Identity / Migration to Spain
caption_attribution_description: Spanish Romani people
context_page_description: The Romani in Spain, generally known as gitanos, belong to the Iberian Cale group, with smaller populations in Portugal and in southern France. Their sense of identity and cohesion stems from their shared value system, expressed among the gitanos as the leyes gitanas. Traditionally, they maintain their social circles strictly within their patrigroups, as interaction between patrigroups increases the risk of feuding, which may result in fatalities. The emergence of Pentecostalism has impacted this practice, as the lifestyle of Pentecostal gitanos involves frequent contact with gitanos from outside their own patrigroups during church services and meetings. To varying degrees, they identify with Andalusian culture and music due to the large and culturally significant gitano population present in that region. Data on ethnicity is not collected in Spain, although the Government's statistical agency CIS estimated in 2007 that the number of Gitanos present in Spain is probably around one million.
context_section_description: How and when the gypsies arrived in the Iberian Peninsula from Northern India is a question whose consensus is far from being reached. A popular theory, although without any documentation, claims they came  from North Africa, from where they would have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to meet again in France with the northern migratory route. Thus, gitanos would be a deformation of Latin Tingitani, that is, from Tingis, today Tangier. Another, more consistent theory, and well documented, is that they entered the Iberian Peninsula from France. Although, there is controversy of the date of the first arrival, since there is evidence of a safe conduct granted in Perpignan in 1415 by the infante Alfonso of Aragon to one Tomás, son of  Bartolomé de Sanno, who is said to be "Indie Majoris". Or instead, could be the so-called Juan de Egipto Menor, who entered through France, who in 1425 Alfonso V granted him a letter of insurance, which is mostly accepted as the first gypsy to reach the peninsula.
  ... As our beloved and devoted Don Juan de Egipto Menor ... understands that he must pass through some parts of our kingdoms and lands, and we want him to be well treated and welcomed ... under pain of our wrath and indignation ... the mentioned Don Juan de Egipto and those who will go with him and accompany him, with all their horses, clothes, goods, gold, silver, saddlebags and whatever else they bring with them, let them go, stay and go through any city, town, place and other parts of our lordship safe and secure ... and giving those safe passage and being driven when the aforementioned don Juan requires it through this present safe conduct ... Delivered in Zaragoza with our seal on January 12 of the year of birth of our Lord 1425. King Alfonso.
  In 1435 they were seen in Santiago de Compostela, Gitanos were recorded in Barcelona and Zaragoza by 1447, and in 1462 they were received with honors in Jaén. Years later, to the gitanos, the grecianos, pilgrims who penetrated the Mediterranean shore in the 1480s, were added to them, probably because of the fall of Constantinople.  Both of them continued to wander throughout the peninsula, being well received at least until 1493, year in which a group of gitanos arrived at Madrid, where the Council agreed to "... give alms to the gitanos because at the request of the City passed ahead, ten reales, to avoid the damages that could be done by three hundred people who came ... ".
  In those years safe conducts were granted to supposedly noble gypsy pilgrims. The follow-up of these safe-conducts throughout Spain has provided some data to historians according to Teresa San Román:
  The number of gypsies that entered or inhabited the Peninsula in the 15th-century is estimated at approximately 3,000 individuals.
  The gypsies traveled in variable groups, of 80-150 people, led by a man.
  Each autonomous group maintained relations at a distance with one of the others, there being perhaps relations of kinship among them (something common in today among Spanish gypsies).
  The separation between each group was variable and sometimes some followed the others at close range and by the same routes.
  The most common survival strategy was to present as Christian pilgrims to seek the protection of a noble.
  The way of life was nomadic and dedicated to divination and performance (spectacle).
  In 1492, gipsy auxiliaries helped the army of the Kingdom of Castile and León in the Reconquista in Granada ending the reign of muslims in Spain.
  Gitanos have a low and little politically committed role, with some particular exceptions, in Andalusian nationalism and identity, which is strongly based on a belief in the oriental basis of Andalusi heritage acted as a bridge between occidental-western and oriental-eastern Andalusian culture at a popular level.  The father of such a movement, Blas Infante, in his book Orígenes de lo flamenco y secreto del cante jondo, etymologically, went as far as alleging that the word flamenco derives from Andalusian Arabic fellah mengu, supposedly meaning "escapee peasant". Infante believed that numero
caption: Spanish Romani people. Yevgraf Sorokin, 1853.
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