THE PORTUGUESE ROMANI: HOW A CULTURE OF RESISTANCE WAS MADE

Five centuries of Portuguese Romani history in five movements. And how to rescue it from obscurity, and give it a place in schools.

I. Arrival in the Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves

Picture King John III of Portugal, in 1521, watching the first performance of Farsa das Ciganas (A Gypsy Comedy), a short play by Gil Vicente. As four women try to read the audience’s palms, four men sell them horses and mules.

“Come, sisters, and approach these beautiful ladies, we’ll predict them luck and good fortune, and they’ll reward us so we can eat,” says Lucrécia, one of the four women. “Beautiful lady, give us a precious item so I can tell your fortune, it won’t cost much.”

According to the linguist and ethnographer Adolfo Coelho (1847-1919), the Romani would have entered Portugal in the second half of the 15th century, “crossing the border with Spanish Extremadura” before discovering “the province of Alentejo to be highly suitable for their way of life”.

There are no known documents for the first arrivals, and no evidence to support the idea that they described themselves as pilgrims. The historian Francisco Mangas says Portugal was off the pilgrimage routes, and did not issue passages of safe conduct of the type with which other Iberian kingdoms identified the first Romani.

The first reference to the Romani is the poem ‘As Martas de Dom Jerónimo’ (‘The Martens of Dom Jerónimo’) (1510), by Luís da Silveira, which formed part of the Cancioneiro Geral, or General Songbook (1516) of Garcia de Resende — which blames a “deception” on “a gypsy or a very fine witch”. The second is the play by Gil Vicente, which portrays Romani women as con artists and Romani men as devious traders.

Everything about the Romani’s way of life – the itinerant lifestyle, the brightly coloured costumes, the adornments, the practicing of palmistry, the language (caló, a variant of Romani) clashed with the deeply Catholic and hierarchical Portuguese society of the time, which assigned each social category its own way of dressing and condemned vagrants and mendicants to forced agricultural labour.

Forgotten By History

When he was little, Bruno Gonçalves, born in 1976, knew nothing about the history of the Portuguese Romani. “It wasn’t talked about at school.” He only remembers reading a story about a girl with black braids by a campfire. “It gave the idea that all Romani were nomads.”

At home in the Ingote neighbourhood of Coimbra, there was no one to tell him where the Romani had come from, how long ago they’d arrived, or about his own history. His parents didn't know. And his deceased grandparents could no longer tell anyone, if they’d ever known.

He gave up on school in eighth grade. “I was the only Romani in my class.” School didn't seem like a place for boys like him, many of whom were already working. Bruno decided to do the same. He was already helping his parents on their clothes stall at the Dom Pedro V Market. “I was going to be a Romani like the others. I was going to make a living from street selling. In another year or two, I’d start a family. I didn't believe there was a place for me on the ‘other side’.”

But Portugal began to invest more in education, professional training and combatting poverty. To get a place on an electrician training course, Bruno and other Romani boys returned to school. By completing a technical and a general module, he finished the third ‘cycle’, or ninth grade, of the country’s basic education system.

He didn’t become an electrician, but realised a different future was possible. In 1999 he co-founded, and became the first president, of the Coimbra Romani Association, and developed the first mediation project at the Ingote Primary School.

This would collect children from home, explain the school rules to them, involve their families and explain Romani customs to teachers. As part of its mission, Bruno began “to search for more positive texts”. He read anything he could get his hands on, and began writing The Story of Little Chico the Romani, a children's story about a nine-year-old boy who, when asked by his teacher about the origins of his people, turns to his grandfather for help.

The book was published in 2011 with the support of the Portugal arm of the European Anti-Poverty Network and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. And a new edition was published in 2021, this time illustrated by the Romani multidisciplinary artist Natália Serrana, as part of a project from Ribalta Ambição, the Association for Gender Equality in Romani Communities, financed by the Support Fund for the National Strategy for the Integration of Romani Communities.

Bruno’s ground-breaking work made him an influential figure. Today, with a degree in Socio-Educational Leadership, he helps young Romani “to make their dreams come true”. He is vice-president of Letras Nómadas, or Nomadic Literature, the government’s partner in the Romed community participation program and the OPRE (Operational Education Programme) education promotion program. And he never tires of teaching Romani history and culture.

His new book is called Know Me Before You Hate Me – Notes on Romani History and Culture (2023) and is also published by Ribalta Ambição, which is run by his sister-in-law, Tânia Oliveira, and his wife, Marisa Oliveira. “It’s a thought-provoking book.” It's a way of attracting more people - adults this time – to Romani history. “It’s a story that involves so much persecution, but also a great deal of resistance and strength.”

Knowing history “helps to understand the asymmetries of the present”. “Talking about culture is also important for understanding there is more common ground than you might think, that we aren’t so different.”)

II. Orders of Expulsion from the Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves

Protests against the Romani reverberated as early as the Cortes, or King’s Courts, of 1525, in Torres Novas. In keeping with other western European monarchs, in 1526 King John III commanded “that the Romani shall not enter the kingdom, and those already here must leave.” The same clamour was heard at the King’s Courts of 1535, in Évora. Here, in 1538, the king reiterated his order: “I command that from this point on no Romani, whether male or female, shall enter my kingdoms and lordships; and that those that do will be arrested and publicly flogged.” Those born in the kingdom who dared to lead a Romani-style life would be exiled — “two years to each of the places of Africa.”

Carlos Jorge Sousa, son of a Romani father and a non-Romani mother who carried out a sociological study based on his ancestors, explains the historical context. In December 1496, King Manuel I ordered the expulsion of Jews and Muslims, with anyone who failed to convert being forced to leave within ten months, or face death and the confiscation of all their property.

The persecution of the Romani was far from finished. In the year of King John III's death in 1557, his wife, Catarina, again ordered the expulsion of the Romani, sentencing those who dared to remain in the kingdom to forced labour on the galleys, alongside convicts and slaves. In 1573 King Sebastian annulled the residence permits obtained by some Romani and gave everyone 30 days to leave, with failure to comply resulting in the women being whipped and the men being sent to the galleys. King Henry, the Cardinal King, granted new licenses in 1579, but excluded nomads.

During Spanish rule, the situation got worse. In 1592, Philip I established a period of four months, at the end of which “those who did not settle as neighbours” and who insisted on “wandering around”, or “living on companies, or in gangs” were to be executed. Philip II successively renewed the ban of entry (in 1603, 1606, 1608, 1613 and 1614) and, although he removed the death penalty, retained the punishment of being sentenced to the galleys (in 1613 and 1614).

The sequence of laws raises doubts about how they could be applied. “Perhaps, if the penalties were so exaggerated, the laws might fall into obsolescence, despite the punishments to which offenders were subject,” says historian Elisa Maria Lopes da Costa.

Mangas points out the “great difficulty” in implementing such decisions. “The crown had no resources. It couldn’t cover the entire kingdom.” Which doesn’t mean there was no impact on the lives of those targeted. Even if not expelled, they lived under permanent threat, which would force them to disguise, to hide. “Many wrote to the king asking to remain in Portugal.”

Taking The Story Into Schools

Such stories are, however, still absent from school textbooks. In an analysis of the History and Geography curriculums from the 5th to the 12th grades, Mangas found only one reference: a recommendation for further reading, in the context of the Holocaust.

A change in school curriculums seems like an “urgent” requirement, if the contribution and presence of the Romani people in Portuguese historiography as a whole is to be understood. And “to reduce the misunderstandings, the tensions”.

Under the remit of curricular autonomy and flexibility, any school can introduce the subject. The Portuguese High Commission for Migration includes a Support Center for Romani Communities, with a team ready to provide training on Romani history and culture to public workers.

There is also The Story of Little Chico the Romani, as well as the Romano Atmo Pedagogical Kit (2016), produced by the Association for the Development of Portuguese Romani Women. And Reflex – A Pedagogical Tool for a New Relationship between School and Romani Communities (2019), a CooLabora project which involved teachers from the Frei Heitor Pinto School Group and members of the Romani community of Tortosendo, in Covilhã. Then there is the Portuguese edition of RISE – Romani Inclusive School Experiences (2020), produced by a team from the University of Minho.

“Talking about ‘commemorative days’, as schools do, isn’t enough,” says the sociologist Maria José Casa-Nova. “Having a ‘Romani Culture Day’ has no effect on what is learned in the classroom. We have to develop strategies based on specific curricular content.”

At the moment, she is coordinating the Portuguese team of the Transformative Romani Art and Culture for European Remembrance (TRACER) project. Next year, there will be a “proposal for the integration of content related to the Holocaust and other aspects of the history of the Romani people into the History curriculum”, to be prepared by a group of Romani and non-Romani students, under the supervision of researchers from the University of Minho and Bruno Gonçalves.

III. Contradictions of the Portuguese Restoration War

Few scholars have focused on the history of the Portuguese Romani. Those that have, as the anthropologist Alexandra Castro wrote, “tend to emphasize the successive phenomena that made the Romani 'victims of history rather than those that constructed it', which may be at the root of perpetuating the negative image of this population group, overlooking the events that led to more territorially hospitable and positive forms of coexistence, and even to some important achievements”. An example of this is the participation of some Romani in the Portuguese Restoration War of 1640-1668.

Mangas recalls how, in 1641, “the War Council ordered the arrest of all Romani found in military battalions, ‘to be sent to the galleys’ with enslaved ‘Moors’”. Yet there is evidence that despite this, they continued to fight to join up.

Brazilian historian Natally Chris da Rocha Menini says that in 1643 the War Council examined a petition sent by a Romani named Fernando de Almeida. “He asked the king for the authorization to raise a company of 50 Romani soldiers in Portugal and, in exchange, requested the rank of captain.” The magistrate voted against the motion, claiming that the Romani would cause “damage and theft”.

Even so, there were Romani on the frontlines. Adolfo Coelho quotes a letter from the crown prosecutor Tomé Pinheiro da Veiga, about a Romani called Jerónimo da Costa, who was killed at the battle of Montijo (1644) and who was last year cited by the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

Jerónimo da Costa fought “‘for three successive years with weapons and horses he paid for, and without receiving a penny’”. The king granted his wife and children naturalised status, allowing his son to become a mechanical officer.

When reading a 1646 petition from Da Costa’s wife, pleading for her son-in-law to also be naturalised, Pinheiro da Veiga interceded. “Why couldn’t His Excellency pay the wages owed to his wife and children? And he ordered the king to issue a license making him a naturalised nobleman, and stating that his descendants should never ply a mechanical trade, but should always serve in war and the militia in the posts of soldiers and in garrisons.”

News of Jerónimo da Costa's dedication did not change King John IV’s position, however. He ordered ten prisoners and their families, supposedly the last Romani families in Portugal, to be granted residency status, but prohibited them from speaking their language or teaching it to their children, from wearing Romani clothes and from reading fortunes (1647). If they disobeyed, they would be sentenced to the galleys and would be exiled to Cape Verde and Angola, leaving their children behind.

In fact, the Restorer King, as he was known, tightened the siege on the Romani. Seeking to destroy any sense of solidarity, he declared a punishment of three years of exile to Castro Marim to anyone who gave or rented a house to the Romani (1648). “Seeking to banish the entire way of life and memory of these wanton people with no seat, no court, no parish, no home of their own, no occupation other than the robberies on which they live, I order that they be arrested throughout the kingdom and brought to this city, where they would be put on ships and taken, divided, to serve in the conquests,” he commanded in 1649. “Only 250 [Romani soldiers] who served on the borders, if they proceed in the form of dress and place of the natives”, were freed from such a fate.

According to evidence found by the historian Elisa Maria Lopes da Costa, he also, on September 8, 1652, called on ‘governors of arms’ to arrest all the Romani they found, before repeating the call on September 12, 1654. In some places, like Elvas, no one was arrested. In others, like Salvaterra de Magos, they were, and were subsequently banished.

How The Romani Are Seen - One Experience

Soraia Caldeira, born in 2013, is in the 3rd grade. On World Theatre Day, March 27th, she had the opportunity to play a character from The Story of Little Chico the Romani. It was her debut in the performing arts.

— Why do you think it’s important to know about this history?

— It’s interesting. And it’s fun to learn about things.

— Can it change how these children see the Romani?

— Yes.

— How?

— There are a lot of people who say ‘I don’t want to be friends with them,’ just because they’re Romani. They bully them. They think they’re bad. And I think that here, as we’ve seen this story, they changed their views.

— In what sense?

— Lots of people around the world think the Romani are bad, but they aren’t. Some might be, but others might be good.

The Support Fund for the National Strategy for the Integration of Romani Communities has allowed small projects on Romani history to be created. One is Teatro Nómada (the Nomad Theatre), which has staged an amateur adaptation of Little Chico the Romani.

On World Theatre Day, this group from the intercultural association Sílaba Dinâmica, based in Elvas, travelled to Portalegre, to the Lungo Drom exhibition, an initiative of the Umcolectivo cultural association, financed by Calouste Gulbenkian and La Caixa, which aims to create a Nomad Museum that will travel around Alentejo.

Boys and girls from three classes from three schools in the José Régio Group (Assentos, Alegrete and José Régio) flocked to the Teatro do Convento. The children of Romani ethnicity who they played, however, did not take part. Instead, some non-Romani children were willing to take on the small roles and perform at the theatre that morning.

When the project began, in November 2022, the breadth of ignorance surprised Cátia Terrinca, its artistic coordinator. Now, she says, they know the Romani people have a history, an anthem, a flag. “But, just like a Brazilian [non-Romani] student didn’t know the flag and found it very beautiful, a [Portuguese] Romani student said that he’d seen that symbol in the songs his mother played at home, that he thought it was very beautiful, but he didn't know what it was.”

In the classroom, the staff member responsible for social intervention, Rui Salabarda, seeks to lead each class from a multicultural to an intercultural perspective, to get Romani and non-Romani children to reflect on stories and traditions, to encourage dialogue and knowledge. He is convinced this is the right age to start. “It’s been a pleasure. They already have the ability to perceive, to see cultural diversity as a source of knowledge!”

IV. Cultural assimilation or deportations to the Portuguese “conquests”?

Portugal began a policy of exiling its convicts in the 15th century. It was a “three for the price of one” policy: it freed the country of its unwanted population, relieved its insalubrious gaols and populated its “conquests”. Until the 19th century, Portugal’s exiles were unique in a European context: they included the Romani.

A significant change in these policies came about in the 17th century. In a provision addressed to the Inspector General of Elvas, King Peter II began to distinguish foreigners from Romani who were “natives, children and grandchildren of Portuguese.”

That monarch ordered the extermination of the former, “who came from Castile”. And forced the latter to take up residence and dress “in accordance with the customs of the kingdom”, under threat of deportation to Brazil (1686). He even declared a death sentence on those who continued to roam and wear their traditional costumes (1694).

King John V insisted on this policy of forced cultural assimilation, renewing the outlawing of itinerancy, Romani clothing and language, dealings in animals and “deceptions” such as fortune-telling. If they persisted in living like Romani, he ruled in 1708, they would receive floggings and be sentenced to forced labour in the galleys for men, and exile to Brazil for women. And he reinforced the order of arrest and exile, ordering in 1718 that those sentenced would be spread among India, Angola, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola and Cape Verde. He justified the change in 1745 with reference to the “carelessness” with which previous laws had been executed. And after the earthquake that destroyed part of Lisbon, King Joseph I decreed in 1756 that the Romani would work on rebuilding the city until there were ships that could transport them to Angola.

Reactions were not uniform. In Brazil, there were many complaints, meaning some Romani faced exile for a second time. In Angola, the governor, Álvares da Cunha, asked Portugal to send him more Romani, as they adapted well to the climate.

Lopes da Costa has found evidence that many of those who went to Brazil later ended up in Angola. In the Official Register of Exiles arriving in Angola between 1715 and 1756, of which she has a reproduction, there are many Romani condemned to perpetual exile for the “simple crime” of who they were. These sentences are especially telling, as other exiles had been sentenced to ten years for murder.

The Inquisition showed little interest in the Romani, who lived on the margins of society. Adolfo Coelho cites a single case: Garcia de Mira, in 1582, who was prosecuted for having “made the figure of a deceased person appear on paper dipped in water”. Lopes da Costa adds others, involving exiles to Brazil. In the first visit of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, in 1591, for example, a Maria Fernandes confessed she had “twice blasphemed God due to the difficulties she had when crossing a river”. On the same occasion, Apolónia de Bustamante said she had lived with a man for seven years, during which time, because he “had given her a bad life, she, in anger and frustration, cried out to God”. In this “moment of exhaustion, she gave herself up to the devils, saying: ‘I give myself to the devils, the devils take me now.’”

Mangas is trying to expand the documentary evidence, but has already discovered there are “very few cases”. “The ones we found concern women, above all, because of the practice of fortune-telling. The inquisitors treat it as a trick, not as heresy. The penalties are minor punishments.”

What seems “very evident” to him, in the documents he has analysed, is that there is a “whole other world, of ordinary experiences, of everyday life”, that has escaped historiography. “Some of these families are more integrated than we might think, if we just look at the history of the Romani through the laws imposed against them.”

In his opinion, “a local perspective is missing”. These archives can uncover dynamics of solidarity, but also of widespread anti-Romani sentiment. When carrying out his study, she came across signs of local tensions. A document from the 17th century, from a village on the outskirts of Bragança, is one example. If the Romani approached, residents rang the bells, joining forces to expel them.

It would be helpful to know what the Romani thought, but they left no record. For now, there is no known episode of organized revolt against their treatment.

Sousa speaks of “passivity” and “resignation”. “They didn’t demonstrate a collective and unifying consciousness, which would allow them to confront the reality of varied historical experiences,” he writes. “They enclosed themselves within themselves, within their structures of groups of relatives, dispersed to a greater or lesser degree, expressed through the authority of adult and older men.”

Sociologist Manuel Carlos Silva, in turn, speaks of a “remarkable strategy of resistance”. “When they have few or no resources, all the oppressed can do is resist passively. Adapt and accommodate, to stay alive, not die.”

Notes on an uprising that began in the past

Luís Romão, born in 1982, plays the grandfather in the adaptation of The History of Little Chico The Romani. He isn’t a man of the theatre, though, but a mediator and instructor. And, like Bruno Gonçalves, he has been traveling from the north to the south of Portugal teaching Romani history and culture.

“We try to make people see why the Romani community is still so closed off,” he says. “Because there have been centuries and centuries of persecution, centuries and centuries of suffering. It’s no coincidence that we live our lives in isolation from others. We’re talking about 500 years of resistance and struggle.”

They often say: “Hey, man, you’ve been in Portugal for so many years and you still haven’t managed to include yourselves!” “Integrate,” corrects his brother, Bernardino, who plays Little Chico. "Integrate. It’s us who say ‘include’. I tell them: ‘Some people are more open-minded. Like me. I join the people, I leave the people, I’m in. But some people are more closed-minded.’”

More than just accepting, it’s important to understand. “Uprising isn’t new. Uprising comes from our ancestors, it passes from generation to generation. Fathers don’t say to their sons: ‘You should be angry, because they did this or that to us.’ No! The fathers don’t know the history.”

There is no shortage of theorists who speak of a trauma transmitted from generation to generation, despite the descendants no longer going through the same experiences. Intergenerational trauma persists not as a memory, but as a reaction. There is a distrust, a defensive attitude towards the outside world, which is often perceived as threatening.

He doesn't believe there are many people like Little Chico's grandfather. “I believe 90% of the Romani community don’t know their people’s history. They don’t know the origins, our passage, the repressive laws, or why we stopped speaking our language.” He doesn't want to think about what would happen if they knew. “I'm really afraid the Romani will find out what happened, because the revolt then would be even bigger.”

V. Special surveillance during the Portuguese Republic

With the Liberal Revolution of 1820, the Constitution of 1822 and the Constitutional Charter of 1826, a new chapter began: Portugal recognized the right of everyone born in its lands to be Portuguese.

It was a turning point in the history of the Portuguese Romani. Until then, Mangas points out, “they weren’t considered Portuguese, even if they were born in Porto, Lisbon or Faro.”

This didn’t mean full citizenship, however. Just look at the police directives of 1848, which required that Romani traveling through the kingdom required a passport. And the regulation of the rural section of the National Republican Guard, approved in 1920, which ordered “strict surveillance” of the Romani.

It was as though all Romani were the same. And the same thinking is found even in Adolfo Coelho's influential study from 1892. Upon reading it, Sousa concludes: “The studies he carried out of the Romani aren’t determined by contact with them, but from contact with the dominant attitudes.” In fact, by the 19th century there was already an ‘elite’ among the Romani.

While Sousa didn't have a grandfather who told him the history of the Portuguese Romani, he had a great-aunt who recounted family stories. And she kept a treasure trove in an old trunk: “Photographs, a first aid kit, newspapers and other things.”

Her name was Esperança, and she was like a grandmother to him. In the 1940s and 1950s, “many Romani families moved to Portugal’s then overseas provinces to make a living selling door to door, or at fairs, markets or other suitable spots.” At the same time, many women practiced palmistry and cartomancy. His real grandmother, Irene, and her husband, lived in Madeira. An incident occurred between her and a male member of the couple's staff, however, and Irene was banished forever, never to see her children again. Carlos Jorge Sousa's father and siblings were raised by Esperança and her husband, António Maia, in Lisbon.

His great-aunt's stories have not been lost with her memories. In his doctoral thesis, Sousa investigates interethnic relations, social dynamics and the approaches to identity of his ancestors.

He preserves, for example, the story of his great-grandfather Manuel António Botas, one of the highest paid banderilleros of his time. When he retired from bullfighting, he started organising races, first in Santana, then in Campo Pequeno. “He had long, well-groomed whiskers, a tall hat and cane”, according to a quote from the Dicionário das Alcunhas Alfacinhas (the Alfacinhas Dictionary of Nicknames, an anonymously written, popular encyclopaedia of the time). He also played guitar and sang fado, and was friends with Maria Severa Onofriana, a legendary fado singer. Raphael Bordalo Pinheiro, a famous artist, drew his portrait.

He also explores the story of his great-uncle António Maia, who was a horse trader for the Royal House of Portugal and served in the First World War, in 1917, as part of the medical corps. He was a generous man and highly thought of by Romani and non-Romani alike. He died from gas inhalation during the fighting in France.

He didn't manage to include the story of his father, Manuel Maia, which now interests him greatly. He too was a fado singer, and after the Salazar dictatorship was overthrown, joined the Portuguese Communist Party, as a member of the fado de Abril (the April Fado) cell. “My father and my uncles all took part in the great struggles that came after April 25, 1974.”

In 1980, the Revolutionary Council declared the unconstitutionality of the aforementioned National Republican Guard regulations. The “strict surveillance” of Romani people constituted negative discrimination, based on ethnicity. The National Republican Guard changed it in 1985, but maintained “special surveillance” for itinerants.

According to researcher Mirna Montenegro Val-do-Rio Paiva, the Romani went from “social invisibility” to “uncomfortable marginality in the system”. Mass settlement movements were followed by concentration in neighbourhoods of social housing, the decline of seasonal and independent work, reliance on social benefits, compulsory education, difficulty in accessing the job market, the increasing influence of evangelical worship, and the emergence of Romani associations. Wider society was forced to interact with the Romani.

There were violent clashes. In 1993, Ponte Lima Town Council decided to expel a Romani community on suspicion of drug trafficking. The Attorney General's Office had to intervene. In 1996, a militia was formed to drive out a community camped in Oleiros, in Vila Verde, again linked to drug trafficking. The community was forced to leave and sell their land. Only with help from the district governor were they able to settle in another town.

Even now the persecution isn’t over, says Casa-Nova. “Now, persecution takes the form of the maintenance of stereotypes and the effect of the verbalization of these stereotypes. These take different forms to those used during the monarchy, but often make people feel harassed, and have a practical effect on their living conditions.”

Manuel Carlos Silva provides an overview of the abusive generalizations used over five centuries to justify the exclusions and persecutions that led the Romani population to forge a culture of resistance: “thieves”, “troublemakers”, “hooligans”, “lazy” and, in recent decades, “drug dealers”, “benefit dependents”. Slurs that weigh heavily when it comes to attending school, renting a house, finding a job, or dealing with institutions.

Own narratives

Turning back to the past, and Gil Vicente’s play, the actor and Romani activist Maria Gil, born in 1972, highlights the “close similarity to what we see today.” The Romani people are still seen “as the other, the incomer.” “We aren’t just here. We're from here. And we've been from here for 500 years! This is our home!”

While their ethnic identity remains, the history of the Romani people reveals how they have adapted to the different countries they’ve settled in. Portuguese Romani speak Portuguese. Most are indistinguishable by their clothing. A few live a nomadic way of life. However, there remains a division between “us” and “them”. “Romani people themselves end up accepting an idea of standardization.”

Juggling both worlds, Maria has raised a mixed family that shatters all stereotypes. She and her son Salvador Gil now appear in the police series Braga, created by Tino Navarro, broadcast on RTP. Another son, Vicente Gil, is the star of the new season of the youth series Morangos com Açúcar (Strawberries with Sugar), on TVI. They’re making history.

When asked how it all began, she talks about the influence of the director and dramaturg Hugo Cruz, from the A Pele (‘Skin’) arts group, of participatory arts, of forum and community theatre. She highlights the collaborative process that led to a role in the short film Cães que Ladram aos Pássaros (Dogs Barking at Birds), directed by Leonor Teles, daughter of a Romani father and a non-Romani mother, who has used acting as a weapon against prejudice. Maria Gil says that her twin boys, born in 2001 “are where they belong”. They started when they were little, doing community theatre alongside her. They studied at the Contemporary Academy of Entertainment. Now, one is at the Higher Education College of Theatre and Cinema and the other at the Porto Higher Education Art College. Both have worked in cinema and television.

She[JY1]  would change her costume for some more lines, but she’s happy being part of Braga. She likes to think about what her participation could mean for other Romani women. “They’ll see a Romani woman playing a Romani woman.” This will prove to them that this space isn’t forbidden, that with hard work it’s possible to get there. And it will help introduce plurality into the image of the Portuguese Romani population.

It feels like the Portuguese Romani are on the cusp of a new era. Later this year, Maria Gil will begin a project with the Bestiário theatre company, led in partnership with Teresa V. Vaz. They’ll give workshops in Romani communities from which a show will be born, to premiere at the Teatro D. Maria II in 2024. She believes involving Romani people in narratives about Romani people makes all the difference. “I don’t wake up in the morning, put on a cape and say: Let’s save the world! But why not save it?”

Bibliography

CASTRO, Alexandra, Na Luta pelos Bons Lugares – Ciganos, Visibilidade Social e Controvérsias Espaciais, Alto Comissariado para as Migrações, 2013[JY2] .

COELHO, F. Adolfo, Os Ciganos de Portugal: com Um Estudo sobre o Calão, Imp. Nacional, 1892.

COSTA, Elisa Maria Lopes, O Povo Cigano entre Portugal e Terras de além-mar, 1997.

GOMES, Bruno Gonçalves, A História do Ciganinho Chico, 2022.

MAIA, Carlos Jorge, Os Maias. Retrato Sociológico de Uma Família Cigana Portuguesa (1827-1957), 2013.

MENINI, Natally Chris da Rocha, O Estigma da “Impureza” dos Ciganos e os Modelos de Discriminação no Mundo Português, ARS, 2016.

NUNES, Olímpio, O Povo Cigano, 1981.

PAIVA, Mirna Montenegro Val-do-Rio, Aprender a Ser Cigano hoje: empurrando e puxando Fronteiras, Universidade de Lisboa, 2012.

SILVA, Manuel Carlos e colaboradores, Sina Social Cigana – História, Comunidades, Representações e Instituições, Edições Colibri, 2014.

 

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This is chapter 2.

Chapter 3 follows[JY3] 

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The Portuguese Romani. What changed after the Carnation Revolution of 1974?

Five decades of democracy not yet enough to improve living conditions, though a process of transformation is underway.

The lives of the Portuguese Romani are changing dramatically. Let's take a trip back in time to before April 25, 1974, and, through the life stories of people of various ages, living in different parts of the country, witness this transformation in action.

Key ideas: hope during the democratic process; settlement/concentration in neighbourhoods of social housing; influence of evangelical churches; decline of traditional livelihoods; use of social benefits; compulsory education; emergence of activism; tensions between tradition and modernity[JY4] .

The end of the war

When Francisco Montes, who was born in 1944, was young, people in the south of Portugal talked of Romani “with a house” and Romani “on foot”, those who “leant against walls” and those who “walked all over the world”. They could be door to door salespeople, horse dealers, animal shearers, or seasonal agricultural workers…

Montes had uncles and cousins who were “on foot” and travelled around the Algarve, but his parents built a zinc shack for the family to live in. He still toured the fairs and markets, buying and selling horses, and soon found other jobs too.

He remembers delivering gas in São Brás de Alportel, in the Faro district, where he still lives, and being stopped by a National Republican Guard soldier. "Well? You’re old enough to join the army.” He acted like he didn't understand. “Look, I don’t know if I am or not.”

In fact, he was old enough to join up, but didn't want to comply with his obligations to the military. “No one wanted to go to the [Colonial] War.” Those who had money fled to France, Germany, Switzerland or Luxembourg, wherever they could.

The rural exodus was underway. Thousands of people moved from villages and towns to urban centres to work in factories. And this migration included the Romani too. How many of them were rural labourers, then went to factories to buy batches of goods to sell door to door or in squares, fairs, or markets, selling where almost no one else would sell? 

Montes fled to Setúbal. He stayed there for about three years, but the conflict — which had broken out in 1961, in Angola, and spread to Mozambique, Guinea and Cape Verde — continued. “I can’t be on the run forever...” he thought.

Mandatory military service lasted four years. He handed himself in in Faro, enlisted in Beja, then was sent to Évora. In Lisbon, he boarded a ship called Niassa and spent three years engaged in armed combat. “The area I was in (Mueda, in the Cabo Delgado province, in Northern Mozambique) was very dangerous, very dangerous.” 

He didn't know how to read or write. In his childhood, education was compulsory up to the 3rd grade for women and 4th grade for men, but who cared about compulsory? To communicate with his family, he asked his fellow soldiers for help. “There was a boy from here who did things for me.”

He received a letter from a girl with 20 escudos in it. On the way back, drunk, he spoke to one of her uncles. “I had to keep her!” According to Romani tradition, only the woman can break a commitment. He was still living with someone else. “I was hoping she’d end it, but no luck...”

The army had a levelling effect. Perhaps it was the only time in a Romani man's life when he was given the feeling of being an equal. The soldiers all wore the same uniform, all ate the same food, and all faced the same dangers.

Montes felt like a kind of bodyguard to the captain, who was from Tavira. “I just wanted to be close to him.” Often, he’d meet up with another Algarve soldier, who had a guitar. One sang Portuguese Romani songs and the other various types of Spanish songs. Sometimes, they’d be asleep and the captain would wake them up: “They’re coming!” And off they went to chase away the fear.

In the bush, the sense of danger troubled him even when he was asleep. When he was at home, he’d “jump in his sleep”. “I carried it with me all the time out there. Fear. Looking one way and the other. Always being ready. We really changed[JY5] ,” he admits. “Many went crazy.” 

Hope During The Democratic Process

The Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974, put an end to that distant, outdated war. On May 2, the Junta of National Salvation issued an amnesty for those who had not complied with the Military Service Law.

A surprising influx of Romani men came to register. On August 8, RTP even reported on the fact, from the Military Recruitment District of Lisbon, the area with the greatest influx.

“Various generations of Romani, at least the older ones, have never registered themselves formally,” explained Major Sousa Dias. “Many weren’t called up for military service. Only a few are registered.” Those in such a situation couldn’t get a passport or a driving license. “They see the advantage of being regularized to avoid persecution and arrest.”

When listening to the voices of the Romani men present there, of the type not featured in the play, what emerges is hope. “The changes from the Carnation Revolution to today might give the young men some more advantages,” said one. “The Portuguese Romani was an ‘animal’, Portuguese, but considered an ‘animal’,” declared another. “The police went after them because they were Romani. They were chased away. We, the entire Portuguese Romani race, were harassed,” he added. “The Romani lived in suffering. And now, as you see, it’s a free country, we’ll use our documents to put it right.”

The 1976 Constitution couldn’t be clearer: “All citizens have the same social dignity and are equal before the law.” But the Revolutionary Council took its time. It was only in 1980 that the regulation of the National Republican Guard rural division calling for “strict surveillance” of the Romani was declared unconstitutional. And it was only in 1985 that it was finally changed, although “special surveillance” remained in force over “nomads”, along with mendicants and prostitutes.

António Costa, who was born in 1944, fled the war. He had been in Angola for three years with his parents, selling carpets, and had returned for military assessment convinced he’d be released. “My father paid 81 contos. They were wrong. Someone else was released and I was called up. I ran away to France.”

He “took a leap”, that is, went without a passport, like thousands of other Portuguese people. He soon met Deolinda Robalo, born in 1950, and who wasn’t Romani. “I was studying nursing. I dated this rascal, and that was that! I got married when I was 17. At 18 I had my first child, at 19 my second...”

Costa worked in a factory for four years, but didn't like it. He likes to be his own boss, to be outdoors, to buy, sell, negotiate. You could say he was born into it. “I was born in Proença-a-Nova. There was going to be a fair. I was born the day before, at night. And the next day I went to Caria, Belmonte, on horseback. That was how it used to be.”

In the 50s, his father started doing deals involving large batches of textiles in Angola, Madeira and the Azores. Many went from the metropolis to the so-called “overseas provinces” to sell door to door, at fairs and markets. And Costa was raised on such a living.

Even now, he gets up at dawn with Deolinda to set up a shoe stall in Penamacor, Fundão and at other markets in central Portugal. “When the bad weather starts, we don’t go,” she says. When it’s good, they go to work, with the help of their eldest son, Tony.

Yearning to return to this traditional way of life, in around 1970 Costa went to Belgium to get a fake passport, then on to Portugal. There, he obtained a new fake ID and went to Brazil. “He was Joaquim Afonso,” recalls Deolinda, who followed him a year later, with the two children. When they heard about the amnesty, they came back.

People came from all over. Some, those who were in the now independent colonies, without much enthusiasm. Others, however, were excited about the change. Costa and Deolinda longed to come home.

Religious opportunity and the rise of the Filadélfia Church

Under the dictatorship, there was no place for cultural and religious pluralism. Non-Catholic confessions were unusual. But the Carnation Revolution brought freedom of conscience, religion and worship.

In France, a man named Clément le Cossec converted to the Assembly of God evangelical church and dedicated himself to evangelizing the Romani. In Portugal, the movement was led by Baltazar Lopes, also from the Assembly of God. He invited French evangelicals to help him convert the Romani, but in the end it was the Spanish who took on the task.

Emiliano Jiménez Escudero had crossed the border and formed the first evangelical group in the Romani community of Tortosendo, Covilhã, in 1973. Religion had a strong impact on a man who had until then been prone to drinking. So much so that he became the first Portuguese Romani disciple — Joaquim Vicente, known as Pastor Quim.

In the beginning, the apostles preached from door to door, in homes, in open fields. In 1975, they set up a tent in the Falagueira area, in Amadora.  A year later, a church in Brandoa. In 1979, they registered the Filadélfia Evangelical Romani Church of Portugal.

The Costa family witnessed the story first hand. Deolinda remembers Baltazar Lopes preaching in Belmonte and Covilhã. She was baptized “by brother Dias” before traveling to Brazil. Costa himself was baptised when they returned, by Pastor Quim, who was even his cousin.

“Quim was our pastor for a long time. He drove around on a little motorbike.” Costa was a candidate for pastor himself, but he preferred to be a deacon, that is, to take on responsibilities linked to the maintenance and functioning of the church.

He took the opportunity to build a small church in Caria. “I asked the bank for money. I took a risk and made money at the church bar to pay the bill.” Deolinda didn't like it. “We had a lot of arguments at home.” A lot of people came to help. “We’d even eat lunch there.” Often he’d carry on working after the others had left.

In the exodus from rural to urban areas, large numbers of families moved to the outskirts of cities. And the Filadélfia Church “moved into these new spaces, installing itself in the (geographic and social) heart of neighbourhoods, opening places of worship and meetings in basements, garages and outbuildings,” wrote the researcher Ruy Llera Blanes. When studying the phenomenon, the anthropologist saw how the church was able to adapt to elements of Romani culture: the division by gender, the council of elders, the central role of music, incorporating rhythms and melodies from flamenco and rumba.

Several researchers have described the changes that resulted from this conversion. The sociologist Maria José Casa-Nova, for example, mentions how pastors, while young, began to take on roles previously reserved for older men, “men of respect”. Another sociologist, Maria Manuela Mendes speaks of greater openness to the society around them — “Many churches are attended by both Romani and non-Romani”. She notices an increase in literacy levels — “Many felt the need to understand the biblical texts better”. And in the relaxation of traditional practices such as the “separation of opposites”, which had fuelled grudges in unhappy families[JY6] . 

This Pentecostal, conservative church also has a role in regulating behaviour. "Can I have a beer? Yes. But I can’t get drunk,” explains pastor Mário Cardoso Fernandes, born in 1973 and the nephew of the famed Pastor Quim, at the end of a service in Caria. “A true believer can’t get drunk, can’t use arms, and knows how to forgive.” The conditioning extends to musical expression. A Filadélfia worshipper can’t sing or dance to worldly or profane, or in other words secular, music. They can only sing to God, or sacred music.

And this isn’t the only example – there are already 400 church workers and 120 churches, while other evangelical services are flourishing. It’s estimated the churches reach 60% of the Romani population, and one wonders what the effect will be on their culture, or whether a split with Romani associations will emerge.

“The demonization of bohemian life was significant in the 80s and 90s, when many families were torn apart by heroin addition,” says Bruno Gonçalves, director of the Letras Nómadas (Nomad Literature) association. “The evangelical faith helped many young people who were lost. But there’s a risk to Romani culture. Even secular Romani music isn’t included at weddings, just evangelical music. And there’s no dancing.”

The awakening of the associative movement to activism

José Maria Fernandes, born in 1956, describes himself as leader of the oldest Romani association in Portugal: the São João de Deus Vikings, in Porto. Their activities date back to 1974, and official registration to 1987.

The neighbourhood began in 1944, as a group of single-story houses in 1944. Eight residential blocks, designed from scratch to house people who lived on “islands” (rows of tiny, overcrowded houses in the city) and Romani from a camp that had to be vacated to allow for the construction of Avenida de Fernão de Magalhães in 1969, soon followed.

José Maria was one of the boys from the camp, established on private land. He slept on the ground, in a canvas tent. “Leave a tent where the water and cold comes in to live in a council house? Our elders immediately said: ‘Yes, please’. They didn’t think twice.” 

Nobody knew what it would lead to. It was one of the first experiences of rehousing the Portuguese Romani.

With hindsight, José Maria considers all of it to have been “ridiculous”. “Councils from the north to the south of Portugal building residential blocks just for Romani, neighbourhoods just for Romani, schools just for Romani? It's ridiculous. Is this how we are going to be integrated into society? No way!"

He never liked being treated as separate. He’d always had his dreams. “I was the first Romani [in the camp] to complete 4th grade.” He went to work on construction sites. “It was hard work.” He tried being a pastry chef, a shoemaker, a counter assistant. “I never wanted to live like a Romani. I wanted to get paid my wages at the end of the month instead of selling.”

In 1974, some young people from the neighbourhood wanted to organize a football tournament. “The Romani also wanted to take part. Some asked me to coach a team and enter the tournament.” He was still against it, but accepted. “We were very badly trained.”

He was still digesting the result when the Revolution hit the streets. It was a joyful moment. “The Romani felt the most freedom. We were persecuted by the police. We were lucky the 25th of April happened.”

In the years that followed, Portugal underwent a kind of explosion in the associative movement. José Maria continued to train young people, but “didn’t know what an association was.” Two staff members made him consider it. “They explained to me what it was and what benefits it could bring.”

His vision expanded. “The matches started to go better. Whenever we won, we’d sing and dance. It occurred to me to organize a group of Romani dances and songs.”

In the 80s, the heroin epidemic was already on the streets of São João de Deus, and many other neighbourhoods in the outskirts of cities. They called it “the gypsy neighbourhood”, “the neighbourhood of the damned”, “the neighbourhood of the condemned”, “the Tarrafal” (an allusion to the concentration camp in Cape Verde).

The demolition process that would lead to the destruction of the neighbourhood this century had already begun. But before that, the National Program to Combat Poverty (1990) attempted to save it, trying to eradicate the tents, which had been erected by people who could no longer find space in the apartments or who had come from Portugal’s former colonies. New housing was built, and facilities and support services created for the population.

The Vikings were a local voice that offered recreation. “Kids on the street came to the headquarters to play cards or billiards. Instead of getting into trouble, they were with us,” recalls José Maria. To give the Romani a voice and a face in civic bodies, he teamed up with his friend Vítor Marques and created the União Romani Portuguesa (the Portuguese Romani Union) in 1998. “My biggest dream was to integrate the Romani communities into society.” Everything came together. The High Commission for Immigration and Ethnic Minorities, now the High Commission for Migration, was created. EAPN/Portugal and Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa had begun training Romani mediators. Associations such as Olho Vivo and SOS Racismo sought to alert society to xenophobia, racism and discrimination. The High Commission for Immigration and Ethnic Minorities joined the Portuguese Romani Union to encourage the creation of further associations.

The first formed by women was created in Seixal in 2000. At the genesis of the Association for the Development of Romani Women is a sociocultural mediation course promoted by the European Centre for Migration Studies. One of the instructors encouraged Olga Mariano, Anabela Carvalho, Alzinda Carmelo, Sónia Matos and Noel Gouveia to form the association.

There were a great many obstacles to overcome. Sónia, born in 1974, says it helped that they were linked by family ties. Olga, born in 1950, meanwhile, as an older woman and a widow, is respectful of traditions and respected in the community.

Assuming the women would wage a feminist emancipatory struggle, the media paid them a lot of attention. This, in turn, forced them to think about what they were doing, to seek continuity and to avoid splits.

Although considered homogeneous, the Romani population is highly fragmented. “It’s patriarchal — what the men say goes,” says Sónia. “At the fairs, several men came to ask my father: ‘Who does your daughter think she is, speaking on behalf of everyone?’”

For the first ten years, the association met in cafes and packed their documents and papers into the trunk of a car. They’d give training sessions on Romani culture to teachers and other staff wherever they could. “Having the opportunity to hear directly from others reduces many prejudices.”

At the moment, they’re based in facilities provided by the Seixal Council and, in partnership with the Institute of Employment and Professional Training, provide training activities with hand-picked instructors, “based around a practical schedule for Romani women, who are used to another way of life”. Sónia wants to help all Romani women to gain autonomy, but especially widows. “They’re at the back of the queue.”

From an incipient recreational, sporting and cultural association, a type of activism formed around small groups and based on the existence of family ties, that seeks to transform discourses and practices in relation to the Romani, has emerged.

Seeking out the origins of this movement, which today has a strong voice, Sónia highlights the guaranteed minimum wage of 1997, the current version of the social insertion income (RSI, using the Portuguese acronym). “What motivated the Romani community was the RSI. The RSI forced the experts to create insertion plans for people.” Adults began to be invited to literacy courses, skills training and professional training. “We started studying, gaining knowledge, becoming aware.”

She had relied on the RSI too, and, for this reason, was invited onto the course. She’d been taken out of school after finishing the 4th grade to look after her three brothers. “At 13, the house was already tidy and lunch was made by the time my mother came home. At 15, I knew how to run the house.” She was ready to get married, as Romani girls her age did. But she wanted more. And the RSI gave her the opportunity to approach her father and say that “she had a signed contract that required her to take a course”. She hasn’t stopped working since, and is now finishing a degree in Social Education.

The impact of public policies

Francisco Azul, born in 1992, is part of the first publicly visible group of Portuguese Romani graduates. He studied Social Work at the Institute of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lisbon.

He doesn't puff out his chest and make speeches about his achievements. He makes it clear these are the result of both an individual and a collective journey, which began back when he was six years old and moved from a shack in Barreiro Velho, to a house in the Quinta da Mina social housing district. He recalls the first time he went into the house “as if it were yesterday”. “It had super white, sparkling walls, and a huge green space, right in front.” He couldn't explain it, but he felt that, living in that brightly painted place, he would have more opportunities.

In 1997/98, when Francisco started at the school nearest his home, there were 5,921 students of Romani ethnicity in primary and secondary education in Portugal. When he approached the end of his journey, in 2018/2019, according to the Directorate-General for Education and Science Statistics, there were 22,556 (25,140, including pre-school). While all finished the 1st cycle, after that the numbers dropped from school year to school year, until there were very few left in secondary school.

The entire welfare state – the public school system, the National Health Service, the Social Security system – contributed to the change. When it entered the European Union, Portugal began to take the fight against inequalities more seriously.

Francisco benefited from the Special Rehousing Program of 1993, designed to do away with shacks in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto. And the RSI, which alleviated the severity of poverty and encouraged school attendance.

In the 21st century, meanwhile, Portugal has moved towards new forms of educational intervention. One such project is Escolhas, or Choices (2001), which began as a juvenile delinquency prevention program and evolved to encourage the social inclusion of children and young people from vulnerable backgrounds. There is also the Priority Intervention Educational Territories programme (2012), which brought more resources to schools in critical areas to reduce indiscipline, absenteeism and school dropouts.

Francisco attended Choices in his neighbourhood. “I painted, drew, and did my homework. It was really good for me.” It allowed him to get to school with his homework done and interact with people from other backgrounds. “When the instructors changed, I was very sad.” It was they who’d taken him to the beach for the first time.

His parents never asked if he’d done his homework. “They never went to school. They don't know how to read. My father was the eldest son and had to help my grandparents. And my mother was one of the youngest and had to help take care of the house. As a family, school was absent from our socialization processes.”

The expectations at home were clear. “My grandfather sold. My father sold.” But the boy looked at the green space in front of the house and imagined another future. After completing 9th grade, he enrolled on a professional Sports Management course.

“The school made an effort to understand and help me, taking into account the difficulties,” he says. It supported those who were considered to be from Priority Intervention Educational Territories. “There was a psychologist, a social worker, a Romani mediator. And they helped me and motivated me, along with some of the teachers.” Before then there had been no specific government policy. Portugal only accepted the need for one at the behest of the European Commission (2011), and approved a National Strategy for the Integration of Romani Communities (2013-2023).

The first National Study (2014) revealed a picture of persistent poverty and exclusion in a diverse range of areas. The High Commission for Migration realized waiting for each area of government – Housing, Health, Education, Employment and Professional Training, Social Security – to do its part wasn’t enough. It had to raise awareness, combat discrimination, promote the teaching of Romani history and culture, gender equality and associations. It launched the National Strategy for the Integration of Romani Communities Support Fund (2015), which finances small projects developed by public and private non-profit entities, and the Support Program for Romani Associations (2017).

The Council of Europe became involved in 2011 through the Romed project, first training mediators and encouraging the creation of associations, then encouraging local action groups. Following this, civil society began to practice positive action measures.

New public policies were created: OPRE (2016), to help Romani people attend higher education, and Romani Educa (2019), to support those still in the 3rd cycle of basic and secondary education. There is also ROMED (2019), to train leaders and mediators, and encourage the creation of local action groups.

“I think we’re making history,” says Bruno Gonçalves, who has a central role at OPRE and ROMED and who drafted the idea of what became Romani Educa. “For the first time, we have positive action policies. In a way, [these are policies of] historical reparation. At the moment, we have almost 40 graduates.”

Francisco participated in the OPRE pilot project, supported by the Portuguese Platform for Women's Rights and the Nomad Literature Association (2015). He was entitled to a scholarship, mentoring, and a training course. He likes to quote Olga Mariano about his opportunities: “We can be whoever we want, without ceasing to be who we are.” He was still studying when he started working at the High Commission for Migration. He is one of the specialists at the Support Centre for Romani Communities. “We like to see immediate results,” he says. “But when we talk about Romani communities, we have to think about multigenerational work.” The starting point was very low. “We’re starting to see results now.”

Tensions between tradition and modernity

Fifty years after the Revolution, Portuguese Romani are more visible than ever. According to estimates by the Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation, while there is a strong concentration of Romani in social housing neighbourhoods (46%), they represent only 3% of the population in such areas. They can be found in neighbourhoods, schools, universities, health centres, hospitals, employment and training centres, the formal job market, and the fields of commerce and leisure.

With the establishment of democracy and accession to the European Union, Portugal has experienced accelerated change. School days have been lengthened, the average age of marriage has increased, the number of children has decreased, there are more divorces and greater life expectancy. “With the Romani, who have been in a situation of exclusion and historical separation for so long, this progress is happening more slowly, little by little,” says Maria Manuela Mendes.

Studies point to dynamics that contribute to the preservation of traditions, such as marriages between Romani, and social control. And those that contribute to change, such as, in addition to those mentioned throughout this piece, widespread access to social communication and information and communication technologies.

Susana Silveira, born in 1989, is blazing a trail. She is one of the first Portuguese Romani to work as a app-based ride-share, or TVDE, driver. A divorced mother of two, she also co-founded the Costume Colossal association in 2019.

She left school at the age of nine, with her destiny apparently already set in stone. And for years she didn’t fight against it. At 18, she married a Romani boy, moved from Almada to the north of Portugal and started selling door to door. Faced with the decline of this traditional business model, however, she tried other markets. For a year, she tried selling in Mexico before returning to Portugal and selling at fairs and markets. After Portugal’s sovereign debt crisis of 2009, she packed her bags and moved to Brazil.

She wanted to improve her life, but knew the limitations her lack of education imposed. She knew how to argue, haggle, persuade, had experience and was responsible and autonomous. “Although I had the ability to run a store and sell everything and anything, I fell short because I wasn’t educated enough.”

Not that she stood still. “I looked for all the help that was going.” She regularly attended the job and training centre. She learnt how to use a computer and studied accounting. With her mother sick and losing her ability to walk, she took on the role of caregiver. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, she started selling on Facebook. A year ago, she took the TVDE driver course. The TVDE platform doesn’t discriminate against her because she is a Romani. “There are lots of Romani TVDE entrepreneurs, who can help make car rental easier.”

When driving in Greater Lisbon, she’s often mistaken for a Brazilian. If asked, she puts people straight: “I’m Portuguese.” Some say: “You’re Portuguese, but there’s something different about you.” “I’m Romani,” she explains. And this surprises some customers. “They don’t expect to see a Romani woman work. Romani women, people think, are at home cooking and taking care of the children.”

“We’re following the same path that you (women) did,” she says. Forty years ago, what did people say about women who got divorced and left home to work? “I’m working to support my children. My daughter is 13 years old and has moved up to the 8th grade and my son is 11 and moved up to the 6th grade. I give them the opportunity to dream about something that I didn’t even know was possible at their age: a profession, a career.”

When asked which Romani traditions should be preserved, she mentions values. And when other activists are asked the same question, the same answers are repeated: love for one’s children, Romani weddings, respect for the elders, laws, practices of burial and mourning.

“Romani laws” aren’t written. They are transmitted orally. They govern the family and social life of Romani communities. They serve to mediate conflicts. There are those who call them “peace-making laws”.

In the Biquinha neighbourhood, in Matosinhos, for example, lives a “man of respect”, a “man of laws”, a “man of peace”: all labels which apply to José Maria, born in 1957, and whose age and ailments are asking him to slow down. 

He always tried to lead an honourable life, with his wife, Ivone Gregório, born in 1951. He always respected traditions, and always worked. “When they needed a security guard, they sent for me. I worked in slaughterhouses for 12 years. Then I went to the airport for three years. I’ve worked here at the Pedro Hispano Hospital for two years.”

Although Biquinha is a large neighbourhood, the Romani residents are concentrated in two residential blocks, situated on the same street. "There’s a lot of noise. A lot of talking. Sometimes there’s trouble. And I don't like it. I'm the oldest person here. If they ask for me, I’ll come, whatever it is.”

As he isn’t related to either side, his authority is accepted – he listens to what’s being said and “lays down the laws”. “I put myself in the middle. I talk to one side, I talk to the other. ‘Look, you’re causing trouble, see the good in that person, and we all become family.”

When asked what Romani traditions should be preserved, he talks about love for his sons, his daughters and his wife. Only then does he mention the importance of one’s word, that unmarried women remain virgins, Romani weddings, the faithfulness of married people, respect for elders, burial and mourning.

The honour of a family rests on the virginity of single women. "Let's suppose I have a daughter and she's ready to marry the guy she likes. Her honour has to be intact, do you understand? If she’s dishonoured, she’s gone.” Will she be banished? “She'll be gone. She could be my daughter or someone else’s, we’ll send her away.” 

Hope for the future

In this permanent tension between tradition and modernity, resisting or letting go, living conditions remain difficult. While they’re undertaken in residential areas with a concentration of Romani people, therefore leaving out the middle and upper classes who are dispersed throughout Portugal, the surveys of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights are still an indicator: in 2021, 96% of the Portuguese Romani population lived below the poverty line, 56% in situations of severe material deprivation; Romani women live on average ten years less than other Portuguese women, and Romani men live 8.5 years less than other Portuguese men.

“It won’t be in my lifetime, but I believe that my children will live in a different world,” says Sónia Matos. Her son is 13 and her daughter is six. It will therefore be a question of decades.

The signs are clear. “I see more and more girls in the 8th and 9th grades.” The last time she was at a school, one came up to her. “I want to be like you. What can I do?” she asked. “You have to keep studying. No matter how many people tell you ‘it’s not for us’, you keep going.” Sónia believes she can do it. “[That girl’s] mother mustn’t listen to what they say.” She mustn’t give in to pressure to take her out of school before she falls in love with a non-Romani.

There are internal and external struggles. Explaining that schooling doesn’t stop you being a Romani is an internal struggle. Explaining that not all Romani are the same is an external struggle. Sónia and other activists are working on both fronts.

“Teachers internalize that these children aren’t going to achieve anything, that it isn’t worth it,” she says. “Today there’s more openness. There are teachers with desire and a different way of thinking to the older ones. I think this is where we can make the change. I believe the Romani community will achieve this through education.”

On the road to inclusion, those with jobs to offer or houses to rent or sell must be more openminded. Sónia could spend an entire day telling stories of racism, ‘Romaphobia’, and discrimination, which compel people to live in social housing or put them on the unemployed list. Changing this “is a matter for everyone”.