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Chapter 4
Gypsies
There were no Gypsies in Benabarre when I lived there, and
itinerant Gypsies rarely visited the village. It is true that one
individual was sometimes described to me as a Gypsy or of Gypsy descent,
but this was whispered as an aside and it was clear that nobody referred
to him as a Gypsy to his face.
The term gitano (Gypsy) had a very negative ring. When residents
described others in unflattering terms they sometimes said the person
was muy gitano (very Gypsy). Or again, they might call the person un
gitano blanco (a white Gypsy). This simply meant that they considered the
person untrustworthy and dishonest. Or it could refer to the uncleanliness
that was also associated with Gypsies. I was once sitting with Isidro in
the plaza when an attractive, dark-complected maidservant passed by.
He generally tracked all of the young women visually but hardly noticed
this one. I was surprised, so to test the water I remarked, “Hey, you didn’t
see a pretty woman go by.”
“Who?”
“La Margarita.”
“Margarita! Pretty!? Are you out of your mind!? She’s horrible! The
worst of the village!”
“How can you say that?” I objected.
“Listen. That woman came into my shoe store the other day and when
she took off her shoes, she showed me two of the dirtiest patas (paws)
you ever saw, like the feet of a Gypsy!”
52 RICHARD A. BARRETT
The first time I saw Gypsies in Benabarre, I witnessed a remarkable
display of awe and apprehension on the part of the village children. I
happened to be gazing from my window to the plaza below when a Gypsy
woman and her two children came into view. The woman was wearing
an orange-and-white dress that hung on her loosely and the children wore
shabby clothing that looked inadequate
for the brisk spring day. They made a
sharp contrast to the neatly dressed
village children who were in the plaza
at the same time playing a ball-and-jacks
game on the sidewalk. When they
spotted the Gypsies they stopped
everything and stared. One of the little
boys stood up slowly and pressed his
back against the wall to give the Gypsies
very wide berth even though they were
passing at least four feet from the group.
As the Gypsies walked to the end of the
plaza, the children stared silently. Only
when they were out of sight did the
children begin talking animatedly
among themselves in the “Did you see
that? Did you see her dress?” mode.
Then one of the little girls got up and ran in the direction the Gypsies
had gone, presumably to watch them from afar.
Some months later I went to the neighboring village of Torres del
Obispo to conduct interviews. Benabarre’s veterinarian was a native son
of Torres and had introduced me to some of the leading figures there: the
doctor, the secretario and a lawyer-landholder. On this particular day I was
driving there to spend the morning with the lawyer. As I approached the
village, I passed a very large encampment of Gypsies, perhaps twenty or
more persons. They were traveling in two or three mule-drawn carriages
and had set up camp in a forested glen about two hundred meters from
the entrance to the community.
After spending two or three hours with the lawyer and his wife, I
departed sometime after noon and again passed the group of Gypsies,
then making preparations for the afternoon meal.
Looking down on the church
plaza from one of the
windows of my flat.
TALES FROM A SPANISH VILLAGE 53
I was scheduled to return to Torres del Obispo the following morning
to interview Señor Doz, the secretario of the village. My wife, Yuki, was
in Benabarre at the time, visiting me on one of her breaks from school
in Madrid. She decided to join me on the trip to Torres.
Doz was an interesting person. He was from a simple laboring
background and had no more than a high school education, yet he had
occupied the important post of secretario for over twenty years. He was
stolid, unassuming and deliberate in everything he did and recounted
events exactly as he saw them. These same qualities caused others to
underestimate him. A secretario in another village described Doz as “a
nice person, but not very bright.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Well, he’s such a payés (peasant) and so slow!”
I didn’t argue, but I disagreed. His farming background made him
accessible and easy for other villagers to deal with. He was perceptive,
informative, and entirely trustworthy. I judged an informant by a simple
standard: if I spent hours writing up notes after an interview, the informant
was worthwhile. If I found little to write, I had wasted my time. After a
conversation with Doz, I always wrote a great deal.
So when we drove back to Torres del Obispo the next day, I was
looking forward to a profitable session. I saw the same Gypsy carts come
into view as the day before. But as we passed the camp, we were astonished
to see three members of the Civil Guard standing with automatic weapons
at set intervals around the Gypsy camp. The Gypsies themselves were
seated on the ground in front of the guards in what appeared to me as
anxious and stony silence.
We drove into the central plaza, parked, and walked up the stairs of
the town hall. Señor Doz admitted us to his office and I saw right away
that he wished we didn’t have an appointment.
“Ricardo, there’s been an unfortunate incident with Gypsies here,
maybe it would be better if we talk some other time.”
“Of course,” I said. “If you’re busy we can wait until you’re done.
We’ll come back later.” I didn’t want to return to Benabarre without
accomplishing anything, so I told him we would remain in the village
until he was free.
“It’s not that I’m busy,” Doz said. “It’s just that this is a difficult matter.
The Civil Guard’s taking care of it, not me.”
54 RICHARD A. BARRETT
I wasn’t getting something. Señor Doz clearly did not want us there,
but it wasn’t because he couldn’t attend to us.
“What’s going on with the Gypsies?” I asked. “When we drove in we
saw guardias with weapons and all the Gypsies on the ground. It looked
menacing.”
“Two lambs and some chickens were found this morning with their necks
broken. The owners accused the Gypsies. They came and reported it to me
and I called the Civil Guard in Graus. They came right away and placed the
whole camp under arrest. That’s what you saw. They’re all under arrest.”
“How do you know the Gypsies did it? Did somebody see them?”
“No. Nobody saw it happen. But that doesn’t matter. Everybody
knows they did it. Something like this happens every time they come
here. Nothing like this happens in Torres for maybe a year or two. Then
come the Gypsies and right away there’s trouble. It never fails. If Gypsies
camp near the village, they cause trouble one way or another.”
“Were the Gypsies caught with the animals? Butchering them?” I asked.
“No, of course not! They’re too clever for that. They just left them
where they broke their necks.”
“But why would they do that? What good would that do them?”
“Because they hoped the animals would be thrown away. Spaniards
don’t eat dead meat, Gypsies do. So they would just be retrieving
something that was discarded anyway. Perfectly legal. But everybody sees
through that. They didn’t expect us to call the Civil Guard, but we did.”
As Señor Doz was talking I realized for the first time that there were
a number of men in the room next door. It soon became apparent that
Civil Guard officers were questioning, and threatening, at least two Gypsy
men in the adjoining room.
At that moment one of the officers, a captain I think, opened the
door and entered the office where we were sitting. He was surprised to
see Yuki and me and apologized for the interruption. He walked over to
retrieve a stick he had apparently left on Señor Doz’s desk. It was a thin
stick, about the size of a long pointer used in a classroom. He shut the
door behind him.
As voices were raised in the adjoining room it suddenly dawned on
me why Señor Doz had been hesitant to have us there. He wanted to spare
us from witnessing the disagreeable events that were about to unfold.
TALES FROM A SPANISH VILLAGE 55
From behind the door I heard the very loud and threatening voice of
one of the guardias; Listen you, this can break ribs, do you understand
me?!”
“No, no!”—a high-pitched wail from the Gypsy and then words I
couldn’t understand. The sounds were loud, anguished and frightening.
As we heard these cries I saw the blood drain from Doz’s face. In
five seconds he turned deathly pale. I had the sensation that the same
had happened to me. All of us were suddenly aware that we were about
to hear the sounds of a nasty beating. “I wanted to warn you,” Doz said,
“but there wasn’t time. I hope you’re ready.” I said nothing.
Oddly enough, I remember thinking that if the guardia was threatening
the man with the stick that he had taken from the office, it was far too
flimsy to break ribs. But I was alarmed, I did not want to be there, yet I
was frozen to my chair.
The voices reached a crescendo in the other room. I heard the Gypsy
yelling in a rushed and frightened voice and the guardia shouting even
louder. Then suddenly, everything stopped. There was no beating, or at
least none of the sounds of it that we could hear. The voices were lowered,
and we soon heard the muffled sounds of people leaving the room and
treading down stairs.
Señor Doz slumped in his chair, greatly relieved. I could see the color
returning to his face. He even managed a weak smile. I didn’t understand
how the matter had been resolved. “What happened?” I asked.
“One of them confessed. Well, he didn’t confess, but he accepted
responsibility. Said they would pay for the damage.”
“So threatening them was enough?”
“That did it. And I’m glad of that! Now let’s do the work you came
for. It’ll be a relief to think of something else!”
As we drove back to Benabarre that afternoon, I thought about the
intensity of the experience and about the many times I had seen the
same sort of thing in Hollywood films: a man beaten in a police station
or by the Mafia. Yet there was no comparison with this very real event.
When I heard the Gypsy pleading and saw Doz turn white in front of
me, my heart thumped like a drum. Yuki said she was just as frightened
as I was. A good lesson, I thought, in the difference between reality and
make-believe.
56 RICHARD A. BARRETT
The following day we learned that since there was no money in the
Gypsy camp, or not enough to pay for the damage, they were allowed to
telephone relatives in Barbastro. These drove up to Torres del Obispo the
same day and paid the indemnity. The amount was apparently arrived at
by asking the farmers to put a price on the lost animals. The camp was
kept under armed guard until the fine was paid. The guardias then forced
the entire group to break camp and leave the area.
In the next few days I discussed the episode with a number of my
friends in Benabarre. Everybody had heard of the incident though none
had seen it up close as I had. I found absolutely no sympathy for the
Gypsies. Even friends like Estéban who generally adopted an anti-Franco,
anti-government, anti-authority stance, had nothing but contempt for the
Gypsies and praise for the guardias. One of Estéban’s friends remarked,
“Fining them isn’t enough. They’ll just do it again. They should put all
those sons of bitches in jail!”
As always in such cases, I talked the matter over with Antonio. I told him
I still wondered why the Gypsies would commit such a transparent crime.
“But don’t you see? They did it in Torres because there’s no Civil
Guard there. They thought they could get away with it. They would
never try such a thing in Benabarre where there’s a cuartel (Civil Guard
barracks).”
“You mean that the peasants themselves couldn’t do anything?”
“Of course not. If they tried to argue with the Gypsies, they’d have the
whole camp against them. Gypsies carry knives. It would be dangerous.
But what the Gypsies didn’t count on was the telephone. Even isolated
people can call the police now. In the old days, the peasants would have
had to put up with it. Not anymore!”
The judgment against the Gypsies was not quite unanimous however.
When I recounted the episode to an intellectual friend in Huesca, she
sprang to the Gypsies’ defense. “How did the authorities exclude the
possibility that some disgruntled farmer in the village didn’t take revenge
on neighbors he didn’t like? He would know that the Gypsies would be
blamed as a matter of course. As you know, there are a lot of frictions in
those villages.”
TALES FROM A SPANISH VILLAGE 57
When I presented this scenario to friends in Benabarre, it was
dismissed out of hand. My most trusted elderly informant shook his
head resolutely. “Nobody in Torres would do such a thing! You might
not get along with all your neighbors and you might even hate some of
them. But nobody is going to kill healthy animals as a means of getting
revenge! Nobody!”
And that was that.
Gypsies
There were no Gypsies in Benabarre when I lived there, and
itinerant Gypsies rarely visited the village. It is true that one
individual was sometimes described to me as a Gypsy or of Gypsy descent,
but this was whispered as an aside and it was clear that nobody referred
to him as a Gypsy to his face.
The term gitano (Gypsy) had a very negative ring. When residents
described others in unflattering terms they sometimes said the person
was muy gitano (very Gypsy). Or again, they might call the person un
gitano blanco (a white Gypsy). This simply meant that they considered the
person untrustworthy and dishonest. Or it could refer to the uncleanliness
that was also associated with Gypsies. I was once sitting with Isidro in
the plaza when an attractive, dark-complected maidservant passed by.
He generally tracked all of the young women visually but hardly noticed
this one. I was surprised, so to test the water I remarked, “Hey, you didn’t
see a pretty woman go by.”
“Who?”
“La Margarita.”
“Margarita! Pretty!? Are you out of your mind!? She’s horrible! The
worst of the village!”
“How can you say that?” I objected.
“Listen. That woman came into my shoe store the other day and when
she took off her shoes, she showed me two of the dirtiest patas (paws)
you ever saw, like the feet of a Gypsy!”
52 RICHARD A. BARRETT
The first time I saw Gypsies in Benabarre, I witnessed a remarkable
display of awe and apprehension on the part of the village children. I
happened to be gazing from my window to the plaza below when a Gypsy
woman and her two children came into view. The woman was wearing
an orange-and-white dress that hung on her loosely and the children wore
shabby clothing that looked inadequate
for the brisk spring day. They made a
sharp contrast to the neatly dressed
village children who were in the plaza
at the same time playing a ball-and-jacks
game on the sidewalk. When they
spotted the Gypsies they stopped
everything and stared. One of the little
boys stood up slowly and pressed his
back against the wall to give the Gypsies
very wide berth even though they were
passing at least four feet from the group.
As the Gypsies walked to the end of the
plaza, the children stared silently. Only
when they were out of sight did the
children begin talking animatedly
among themselves in the “Did you see
that? Did you see her dress?” mode.
Then one of the little girls got up and ran in the direction the Gypsies
had gone, presumably to watch them from afar.
Some months later I went to the neighboring village of Torres del
Obispo to conduct interviews. Benabarre’s veterinarian was a native son
of Torres and had introduced me to some of the leading figures there: the
doctor, the secretario and a lawyer-landholder. On this particular day I was
driving there to spend the morning with the lawyer. As I approached the
village, I passed a very large encampment of Gypsies, perhaps twenty or
more persons. They were traveling in two or three mule-drawn carriages
and had set up camp in a forested glen about two hundred meters from
the entrance to the community.
After spending two or three hours with the lawyer and his wife, I
departed sometime after noon and again passed the group of Gypsies,
then making preparations for the afternoon meal.
Looking down on the church
plaza from one of the
windows of my flat.
TALES FROM A SPANISH VILLAGE 53
I was scheduled to return to Torres del Obispo the following morning
to interview Señor Doz, the secretario of the village. My wife, Yuki, was
in Benabarre at the time, visiting me on one of her breaks from school
in Madrid. She decided to join me on the trip to Torres.
Doz was an interesting person. He was from a simple laboring
background and had no more than a high school education, yet he had
occupied the important post of secretario for over twenty years. He was
stolid, unassuming and deliberate in everything he did and recounted
events exactly as he saw them. These same qualities caused others to
underestimate him. A secretario in another village described Doz as “a
nice person, but not very bright.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Well, he’s such a payés (peasant) and so slow!”
I didn’t argue, but I disagreed. His farming background made him
accessible and easy for other villagers to deal with. He was perceptive,
informative, and entirely trustworthy. I judged an informant by a simple
standard: if I spent hours writing up notes after an interview, the informant
was worthwhile. If I found little to write, I had wasted my time. After a
conversation with Doz, I always wrote a great deal.
So when we drove back to Torres del Obispo the next day, I was
looking forward to a profitable session. I saw the same Gypsy carts come
into view as the day before. But as we passed the camp, we were astonished
to see three members of the Civil Guard standing with automatic weapons
at set intervals around the Gypsy camp. The Gypsies themselves were
seated on the ground in front of the guards in what appeared to me as
anxious and stony silence.
We drove into the central plaza, parked, and walked up the stairs of
the town hall. Señor Doz admitted us to his office and I saw right away
that he wished we didn’t have an appointment.
“Ricardo, there’s been an unfortunate incident with Gypsies here,
maybe it would be better if we talk some other time.”
“Of course,” I said. “If you’re busy we can wait until you’re done.
We’ll come back later.” I didn’t want to return to Benabarre without
accomplishing anything, so I told him we would remain in the village
until he was free.
“It’s not that I’m busy,” Doz said. “It’s just that this is a difficult matter.
The Civil Guard’s taking care of it, not me.”
54 RICHARD A. BARRETT
I wasn’t getting something. Señor Doz clearly did not want us there,
but it wasn’t because he couldn’t attend to us.
“What’s going on with the Gypsies?” I asked. “When we drove in we
saw guardias with weapons and all the Gypsies on the ground. It looked
menacing.”
“Two lambs and some chickens were found this morning with their necks
broken. The owners accused the Gypsies. They came and reported it to me
and I called the Civil Guard in Graus. They came right away and placed the
whole camp under arrest. That’s what you saw. They’re all under arrest.”
“How do you know the Gypsies did it? Did somebody see them?”
“No. Nobody saw it happen. But that doesn’t matter. Everybody
knows they did it. Something like this happens every time they come
here. Nothing like this happens in Torres for maybe a year or two. Then
come the Gypsies and right away there’s trouble. It never fails. If Gypsies
camp near the village, they cause trouble one way or another.”
“Were the Gypsies caught with the animals? Butchering them?” I asked.
“No, of course not! They’re too clever for that. They just left them
where they broke their necks.”
“But why would they do that? What good would that do them?”
“Because they hoped the animals would be thrown away. Spaniards
don’t eat dead meat, Gypsies do. So they would just be retrieving
something that was discarded anyway. Perfectly legal. But everybody sees
through that. They didn’t expect us to call the Civil Guard, but we did.”
As Señor Doz was talking I realized for the first time that there were
a number of men in the room next door. It soon became apparent that
Civil Guard officers were questioning, and threatening, at least two Gypsy
men in the adjoining room.
At that moment one of the officers, a captain I think, opened the
door and entered the office where we were sitting. He was surprised to
see Yuki and me and apologized for the interruption. He walked over to
retrieve a stick he had apparently left on Señor Doz’s desk. It was a thin
stick, about the size of a long pointer used in a classroom. He shut the
door behind him.
As voices were raised in the adjoining room it suddenly dawned on
me why Señor Doz had been hesitant to have us there. He wanted to spare
us from witnessing the disagreeable events that were about to unfold.
TALES FROM A SPANISH VILLAGE 55
From behind the door I heard the very loud and threatening voice of
one of the guardias; Listen you, this can break ribs, do you understand
me?!”
“No, no!”—a high-pitched wail from the Gypsy and then words I
couldn’t understand. The sounds were loud, anguished and frightening.
As we heard these cries I saw the blood drain from Doz’s face. In
five seconds he turned deathly pale. I had the sensation that the same
had happened to me. All of us were suddenly aware that we were about
to hear the sounds of a nasty beating. “I wanted to warn you,” Doz said,
“but there wasn’t time. I hope you’re ready.” I said nothing.
Oddly enough, I remember thinking that if the guardia was threatening
the man with the stick that he had taken from the office, it was far too
flimsy to break ribs. But I was alarmed, I did not want to be there, yet I
was frozen to my chair.
The voices reached a crescendo in the other room. I heard the Gypsy
yelling in a rushed and frightened voice and the guardia shouting even
louder. Then suddenly, everything stopped. There was no beating, or at
least none of the sounds of it that we could hear. The voices were lowered,
and we soon heard the muffled sounds of people leaving the room and
treading down stairs.
Señor Doz slumped in his chair, greatly relieved. I could see the color
returning to his face. He even managed a weak smile. I didn’t understand
how the matter had been resolved. “What happened?” I asked.
“One of them confessed. Well, he didn’t confess, but he accepted
responsibility. Said they would pay for the damage.”
“So threatening them was enough?”
“That did it. And I’m glad of that! Now let’s do the work you came
for. It’ll be a relief to think of something else!”
As we drove back to Benabarre that afternoon, I thought about the
intensity of the experience and about the many times I had seen the
same sort of thing in Hollywood films: a man beaten in a police station
or by the Mafia. Yet there was no comparison with this very real event.
When I heard the Gypsy pleading and saw Doz turn white in front of
me, my heart thumped like a drum. Yuki said she was just as frightened
as I was. A good lesson, I thought, in the difference between reality and
make-believe.
56 RICHARD A. BARRETT
The following day we learned that since there was no money in the
Gypsy camp, or not enough to pay for the damage, they were allowed to
telephone relatives in Barbastro. These drove up to Torres del Obispo the
same day and paid the indemnity. The amount was apparently arrived at
by asking the farmers to put a price on the lost animals. The camp was
kept under armed guard until the fine was paid. The guardias then forced
the entire group to break camp and leave the area.
In the next few days I discussed the episode with a number of my
friends in Benabarre. Everybody had heard of the incident though none
had seen it up close as I had. I found absolutely no sympathy for the
Gypsies. Even friends like Estéban who generally adopted an anti-Franco,
anti-government, anti-authority stance, had nothing but contempt for the
Gypsies and praise for the guardias. One of Estéban’s friends remarked,
“Fining them isn’t enough. They’ll just do it again. They should put all
those sons of bitches in jail!”
As always in such cases, I talked the matter over with Antonio. I told him
I still wondered why the Gypsies would commit such a transparent crime.
“But don’t you see? They did it in Torres because there’s no Civil
Guard there. They thought they could get away with it. They would
never try such a thing in Benabarre where there’s a cuartel (Civil Guard
barracks).”
“You mean that the peasants themselves couldn’t do anything?”
“Of course not. If they tried to argue with the Gypsies, they’d have the
whole camp against them. Gypsies carry knives. It would be dangerous.
But what the Gypsies didn’t count on was the telephone. Even isolated
people can call the police now. In the old days, the peasants would have
had to put up with it. Not anymore!”
The judgment against the Gypsies was not quite unanimous however.
When I recounted the episode to an intellectual friend in Huesca, she
sprang to the Gypsies’ defense. “How did the authorities exclude the
possibility that some disgruntled farmer in the village didn’t take revenge
on neighbors he didn’t like? He would know that the Gypsies would be
blamed as a matter of course. As you know, there are a lot of frictions in
those villages.”
TALES FROM A SPANISH VILLAGE 57
When I presented this scenario to friends in Benabarre, it was
dismissed out of hand. My most trusted elderly informant shook his
head resolutely. “Nobody in Torres would do such a thing! You might
not get along with all your neighbors and you might even hate some of
them. But nobody is going to kill healthy animals as a means of getting
revenge! Nobody!”
And that was that.
Dr. Barrett was born in San Fernando, California. Throughout his childhood, he was interested in traveling and learning about other cultures. His childhood interest expanded to include his academic goals. Barrett graduated Summa Cum Laude in anthropology from the University of California in Los Angeles, where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity. Throughout his pursuit towards a higher education, Barrett was recognized for academic excellence. He was selected as recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and as a fellow in the National Institute of Mental Health. He was awarded the Ford Foundation grant which funded his travels throughout Spain, and to further advance his studies in anthropology to an even greater degree.
After his time in Spain, Dr. Barrett taught cultural anthropology at Temple University and the University of New Mexico and wrote Benabarre: The Modernization of a Spanish Village, an analysis of the village he stayed in during his doctoral research. He also published Culture and Conduct: An Excursion in Anthropology.
In Tales from a Spanish Village, Barrett’s remarkable, true-life adventure begins when he receives a grant from his professor to finish research on his doctoral dissertation in Benabarre, Spain. The memoir details Barrett’s adjustments to student life in a small, peasant town and chronicles his encounters with various characters and customs. It also details a first-hand look at Spain ruled by the Franco dictatorship, when he witnessed those considered to be lower class treated harshly by the police.
Dr. Barrett currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Carpinteria, California with his wife, Dottie. He is retired and enjoys woodworking, fly fishing for trout and collecting twentieth century art. Barrett is also an active member of various art groups in Santa Fe, especially those that support contemporary art. For more information, please visit www.richardabarrett.com.
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