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Introduction
7
Introduction
Another year has passed and the Fundación Secretariado Gitano (FSG) presents its Annual Report on Discrimination and
the Roma Community. This is the 10th year of publication of this report, the main objective of which is to shed light
on and report discrimination which, unfortunately, the Roma community continues to suffer.
We believe it is extremely important for the government and the society at large to be aware of these cases of
discrimination and thus have an idea of the everyday reality that Roma families face in gaining access to housing,
employment, education and services simply because of their ethnic background. In some cases, rejection has over-
stepped the boundary of discrimination and turned into racist violence as was the case this year in two towns in the
south of Spain, Estepa and Castellar, where the homes of several Roma families were set on fire during the course of
racist demonstrations. Unfortunately, political parties and human rights organisations failed to speak out against these
inadmissible and unjust acts.
We’ve been working for ten years in the area of equal treatment and anti-discrimination and can confirm that discrim-
ination against the Roma community is caused by the negative social image people have of them, i.e. prejudice and
stereotypes that are proving difficult to eliminate because they are deeply rooted in our society and in the arguments
used by most citizens when erroneously referring to this sector of the population. Many Roma have a standard lifestyle
and don’t even remotely resemble the negative social image which limits their right to equal treatment.
Societal awareness is intimately linked to the media that play a key role in this connection. In the cases recorded in this
decade of work we found that the media often perpetuate a biased and prejudiced image of the Roma community.
Moreover, regarding the image of the Roma community, we regret to report that in the latest update of the Spanish
dictionary by the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, the latter changed the fourth definition of the word “Gitano”
(Roma). It used to read: “one who deceives” and now has been updated by: “swindler, cheat”. So now when the Spanish
society looks up the word “gitano” in our dictionary they will see the Roma community associated with “swindler or
cheat who, by illegal deception, cheats someone in a purchase, sale or exchange.”
Once again this year we want to give the victims of discrimination a voice and let people know that they need to be
effectively accompanied and defended, especially in these times of economic crisis when inequality is ravaging the
most vulnerable. We believe it vital that our country continues to be known for being inclusive and to that end actions
and measures must be implemented to guarantee equal treatment and opportunities for all.
As regards the defence of non-discrimination, we still face challenges. In our ten years of work, we feel that very little
progress has been made in implementing existing legislation in this area, there is still a significant lack of data on dis-