We remember and honour the Roma victims of the Holocaust and the Great Round-up of 1749 [editar]
On 30 July 1749, the Great Round-up took place, an attempt to exterminate the Roma people in Spain instigated by Bishop Vázquez Tablada and carried out by the Marquis of La Ensenada with the authorisation of King Ferdinand VI.
The orders called for the arrest of all Roma throughout Spain, resulting in the detention of more than 10,000 Roma. Following the arrests, the detainees were divided into two groups: the men were sent to perform forced labour in the naval arsenals, whilst the women and children were sent to prisons or factories.
These imprisonments lasted until 1765 and, during those years, many Roma died as a result of the unsanitary conditions in the prisons and the harshness of the forced labour. This episode left a deep mark on the Roma people, although it remains one of the least known events in Spanish history.
Another of the tragic historical episodes endured by the Roma people was the Holocaust, known in Romani as Porrajmos or Samudaripén (the Romani Holocaust), in which an estimated 500,000 Roma from various European countries were murdered in concentration camps. Every 2 August, as declared by the European Parliament in 2015, the European Day of Remembrance for the Roma Holocaust is observed, in memory of the night of 2–3 August 1944, when SS guards at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp dragged more than 4,300 Roma children, women and men from their barracks to be killed in the gas chambers.
Samudaripen Memorial 2026
Once again this year, we took part in Spain, alongside other organisations from the Roma community, in the event organised by the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and 2030 Agenda to commemorate Samudaripen, a memorial paying tribute to the victims of these events.
The event was presided over by the Minister for Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and the 2030 Agenda, Pablo Bustinduy, who gave a speech in which he emphasised the need to remember the past, but also to look to the future: “Today is also a day to renew our commitment to eradicating the discrimination suffered by the Roma, which is incompatible with a democracy such as the one we aspire to be.”
During the ceremony, the International Roma Anthem, “Gelem, Gelem” (“I walked, I walked”), was performed by the Cervantine Philharmonic Orchestra of the 25 Towns, featuring Salomé Pavón, with music composed and conducted by Francisco Suárez.
With this tribute, we honour the memory of the victims of the Great Round-up of 1749 and the Romani victims of the Holocaust – two chapters of history that are still too often silenced, scarcely studied in classrooms and remain unknown to a large part of society.
We conclude by recalling the words of Ceija Stojka, a Romani survivor of the Nazi Holocaust: ‘I am afraid that Europe is forgetting its past and that Auschwitz is merely lying dormant.’