The Gypsies of Early Modern Spain, 1425-1783 (review)

Writing a history of the Gypsies is a difficult endeavour, especially since the records on which to base such a history come chiefly from legal documents providing only a limited and prejudicial account of a past that is irrecoverable. Fortunately, Richard J. Pym proceeds with caution in his history of Gypsies in early modern Spain. During the period 1425–1783, those subjects designated as Gypsies (by those who were not), shunned both the written word and those who wrote it for reasons that the long history of Romani repression justifies all too well. In the absence of reliable accounts, what survives are mostly official documents: royal decrees, judicial proceedings and treatises promulgated by Spanish arbitristas and councils eager to find scape-goats for the fact of Castille's diminishing resources. Under their guise as reformers, the arbitristas disseminated the most pernicious portraits, adding to the spurious myths already in circulation before the seventeenth century. Chapter 4 usefully reviews in depth the 'megaphone anti-gypsy prejudice' of arbitristas who, with their combination of fact, hearsay, exaggeration and myth, were influential in creating the idea of the Gypsy as an acute problem.

Similarly, Gypsies in literature, examined in the chapter 'Representations', reflect popular negative stereotypes, even if the treatment is in some cases (notably in Cervantes) more subtle than that of the arbitristas. Only a handful of sympathetic portraits went beyond the routine moral condemnation of Gypsies as thieves and weavers of tales. Pym duly treats these and all other sources with a wary circumspection, indicating on occasion when information is unverifiable, but also when he suspects that some fictional information may provide credible insight into Gypsy history. Nevertheless, rather than offer a history of the Gypsies per se, through his close and perceptive readings of available documents, Pym has woven a fascinating tale of the evolving notion of Gypsy identity according to those who wished the Gypsies to disappear. Thus we learn that as the period advances, the Gypsies' racial identity is officially denied in the interest of a policy of forced sedentarization and assimilation, which, as is well documented, never took place completely. Under the Hapsburgs Gypsies who were apprehended faced severe penalties, such as those issued in Philip IV's ordinances of 1633, which are examined at length in Chapter 6, yet no royal decree had the desired effect of ridding the nation of its unruly subjects. Varying degrees of convivencia continued during even the most repressive times as the Gypsies developed social and spatial survival strategies.

The reason for the lack of enforcement of decrees and ordinances has to do with struggles over jurisdiction between seigneurial, ecclesiastical and other powers that often trumped royal jurisdiction. By detailing the complicated questions of jurisdiction that were a recurring cause of friction, Pym helps to explain why Gypsies managed to maintain a cultural identity when so many powers were intent upon suppressing it. For example, it worked to the benefit of the Gypsies that the Catholic Church was in a jurisdictional dispute with the Crown and the civil authorities to maintain the right to offer sanctuary to those who sought it. On the other hand, in times when the Crown desperately needed manpower, royal decrees were enforced and sanctuary was violated. The issue was settled in 1748 with a decree that allowed for Gypsies to be removed forcibly from churches, and Pym dedicates part of the last chapter to the catastrophic effects of this removal of ecclesiastical protection. The period of 1700 to 1783 is the subject of the last and most painful chapter, which describes the severe repression and law enforcement that occurred during the centralization of government power under the Bourbon kings.

An especially useful aspect of this study is the author's careful analysis of the motives and interests behind many of the anti-Gypsy decrees, ordinances and diatribes, some of which were diversions from unpopular initiatives and government blunders. For example, the shortage of oarsmen...