THE Moors, after their subjugation, and previous to their expulsion from
Spain, generally resided apart, principally in the suburbs of the towns,
where they kept each other in countenance, being hated and despised by
the Spaniards, and persecuted on all occasions. By this means they
preserved, to a certain extent, the Arabic language, though the use of it
was strictly forbidden, and encouraged each other in the secret exercise
of the rites of the Mohammedan religion, so that, until the moment of
their final expulsion, they continued Moors in almost every sense of the
word. Such places were called Morerias, or quarters of the Moors.
In like manner there were Gitanerias, or quarters of the Gitános, in many
of the towns of Spain; and in more than one instance particular barrios
or districts are still known by this name, though the Gitános themselves
have long since disappeared. Even in the town of Oviedo, in the heart of
the Asturias, a province never famous for Gitános, there is a place
called the Gitaneria, though no Gitáno has been known to reside in the
town within the memory of man, nor indeed been seen, save, perhaps, as a
chance visitor at a fair.
The exact period when the Gitános first formed these colonies within the
towns is not known; the laws, however, which commanded them to abandon
their wandering life under penalty of banishment and death, and to become
stationary in towns, may have induced them first to take such a step. By
the first of these laws, which was made by Ferdinand and Isabella as far
back as the year 1499, they are commanded to seek out for themselves
masters. This injunction they utterly disregarded. Some of them for
fear of the law, or from the hope of bettering their condition, may have
settled down in the towns, cities, and villages for a time, but to expect
that a people, in whose bosoms was so deeply rooted the love of lawless
independence, would subject themselves to the yoke of servitude, from any
motive whatever, was going too far; as well might it have been expected,
according to the words of the great poet of Persia, _that they would have
washed their skins white_.
In these Gitanerias, therefore, many Gypsy families resided, but ever in
the Gypsy fashion, in filth and in misery, with little of the fear of
man, and nothing of the fear of God before their eyes. Here the swarthy
children basked naked in the sun before the doors; here the women
prepared love draughts, or told the buena ventura; and here the men plied
the trade of the blacksmith, a forbidden occupation, or prepared for
sale, by disguising them, animals stolen by themselves or their
accomplices. In these places were harboured the strange Gitános on their
arrival, and here were discussed in the Rommany language, which, like the
Arabic, was forbidden under severe penalties, plans of fraud and plunder,
which were perhaps intended to be carried into effect in a distant
province and a distant city.
The great body, however, of the Gypsy race in Spain continued independent
wanderers of the plains and the mountains, and indeed the denizens of the
Gitanerias were continually sallying forth, either for the purpose of
reuniting themselves with the wandering tribes, or of strolling about
from town to town, and from fair to fair. Hence the continual complaints
in the Spanish laws against the Gitános who have left their places of
domicile, from doing which they were interdicted, even as they were
interdicted from speaking their language and following the occupations of
the blacksmith and horse-dealer, in which they still persist even at the
present day.
The Gitanerias at evening fall were frequently resorted to by individuals
widely differing in station from the inmates of these places—we allude to
the young and dissolute nobility and hidalgos of Spain. This was
generally the time of mirth and festival, and the Gitános, male and
female, danced and sang in the Gypsy fashion beneath the smile of the
moon. The Gypsy women and girls were the principal attractions to these
visitors; wild and singular as these females are in their appearance,
there can be no doubt, for the fact has been frequently proved, that they
are capable of exciting passion of the most ardent description,
particularly in the bosoms of those who are not of their race, which
passion of course becomes the more violent when the almost utter
impossibility of gratifying it is known. No females in the world can be
more licentious in word and gesture, in dance and in song, than the
Gitánas; but there they stop: and so of old, if their titled visitors
presumed to seek for more, an unsheathed dagger or gleaming knife
speedily repulsed those who expected that the gem most dear amongst the
sect of the Roma was within the reach of a Busno.
Such visitors, however, were always encouraged to a certain point, and by
this and various other means the Gitános acquired connections which
frequently stood them in good stead in the hour of need. What availed it
to the honest labourers of the neighbourhood, or the citizens of the
town, to make complaints to the corregidor concerning the thefts and
frauds committed by the Gitános, when perhaps the sons of that very
corregidor frequented the nightly dances at the Gitaneria, and were
deeply enamoured with some of the dark-eyed singing-girls? What availed
making complaints, when perhaps a Gypsy sibyl, the mother of those very
girls, had free admission to the house of the corregidor at all times and
seasons, and spaed the good fortune to his daughters, promising them
counts and dukes, and Andalusian knights in marriage, or prepared
philtres for his lady by which she was always to reign supreme in the
affections of her husband? And, above all, what availed it to the
plundered party to complain that his mule or horse had been stolen, when
the Gitáno robber, perhaps the husband of the sibyl and the father of the
black-eyed Gitanillas, was at that moment actually in treaty with my lord
the corregidor himself for supplying him with some splendid thick-maned,
long-tailed steed at a small price, to be obtained, as the reader may
well suppose, by an infraction of the laws? The favour and protection
which the Gitános experienced from people of high rank is alluded to in
the Spanish laws, and can only be accounted for by the motives above
detailed.
The Gitanerias were soon considered as public nuisances, on which account
the Gitános were forbidden to live together in particular parts of the
town, to hold meetings, and even to intermarry with each other; yet it
does not appear that the Gitanerias were ever suppressed by the arm of
the law, as many still exist where these singular beings ‘marry and are
given in marriage,’ and meet together to discuss their affairs, which, in
their opinion, never flourish unless those of their fellow-creatures
suffer. So much for the Gitanerias, or Gypsy colonies in the towns of
Spain.