Roma Solidarity
La Model. Memory Site. C/ d’Entença, 155 – Barcelona, Spain
November 21st, 2023
The activity “Memory forum Roma solidarity” has been carried out in Barcelona in an all-day conference (morning and afternoon) dedicated to memory and Roma resistance “Subaltern memories international conference 2023”. The morning sessions (9:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.) were dedicated to “Transnational forum: Roma resistance and the afternoon sessions (4-6:30 p.m.) were dedicated to “Memory forum Roma Solidarity. A video summary is being made and will be available in the next few days on the Project website and the NOVACT website. 74 people assisted to the conference (institutions, civil society organisations, roma organisations, journalist, etc.).
The Memory forum Roma Solidarity began with the visualization of a documentary. The documentary “Samudaripen: The Forgotten Holocaust” was presented in 2015 and recorded in August 2014, where a group of young women from the project Voices Roma—Romane Glasura traveled to the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau located in Poland, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the annihilation of the Roma families on the night of August 2, 1944. For a week they join a group of more than 1,000 young Roma from all over the world. Together, they approach one of the worst atrocities in recent human history as well as the current reality of the Sinti and Roma people, still full of racism and injustice. More than ever proud of their origin, they feel an inner need to understand the reasons for the historical mistreatment of the Roma and adopt a strong commitment to their own future.
Fernanda Zanuzzi moderated the second table of the three participants members of the roma community in Barcelona: Ricard Valentí Gutiérrez (Roma youth Association of Gracia Neighbourhood Rromanipe’s ), Paqui Perona (Rromane Glasura I Fundació Surt), and Gabriel Gómez i Plana (Cultural Association Helios Gomez). This second table has been focused on roma memory, anti-Francoism and fight against Romaphobia
Ricard Valentí is president of the association Youth Roma of Gracia neighborhood and a Roma rights activist and human rights defender. He is also a roma historian and expert in the Sumadaripen. He regrets the still reminiscentness of fascism present in the Spanish framework, as well as the fact of not being not compensating economically for the Nazi genocide and not being present at the Nuremberg trials in a global framework. He explains the suffering of the Roma during Nazism and Francoism as a collective that suffered extermination and persecution.
Paqui Perona Cortés is part of the roma comunity in the neighborhood of La Mina in Barcelona, founding member of Romano Glasura-Voces Gitanas and producer of the documentary “Samudaripen. The forgotten Holocaust”. She also works for the Surt Foundation and is a feminist activist as a Roma woman, as she believes the feminism and roma is a cross-cutting topic. Paqui Perona talks about the importance of the documentary, which puts into value the experience of a group of women who travel from Spain to Poland to give a global perspective. For her, it is very important that the minorities begin to build and debate from their perspective, affirming that their history has been whitewashed and written by people who do not belong to the collective. At the same time, she wants to contribute to feminism from the roma perspective, who remarks that the first step is to deconstruct the history full of stereotypes and stigmas in order to build a new one. She argues that the Roma associations in Spain have been criticized in its beginnings for wanting to give its experience of history, speaking of the absence of culture and memory, saying that it is not a coincidence but a discriminatory and re educational fact towards this Roma minority.
She criticizes the institutions and the micro-racisms that they entail, saying that in many cases, they have always been a minority forced to be apolitical because all the governments in power have been marginalized them.
Roma community was victim of a lot of repression in Franco’s time and that was an impediment to maintain roma’s memory as the people who had survived did not want to talk about their history and experiences. She also highlighted the importance of recovering the memory of the “hutting” housing (barranquismo) in Barcelona.
She spoke of the historical legacy that has been lej to the Roma and the stereotypes linked to danger and crime, which conknue to be seen in the media of communicakon and the media with the literature and the educakon, giving value to the historic repair that these Roma people need.
Helios Gomez is a character closely linked to La Model, as he is the author of the Roma Chapel. Gabriel is a promoter for the deffense of La Model in order to follow a space dedicated to social equipment and in a space of democrakc memory. He began by defining the Roma people, talking about their culture and family, the richness of having a language that allows them to communicate all over the world, valuing their mobility, and their condikons as cikzens of the world. At the end, Helios Gómez, son of the roma arkst Helios Gomez, put in value the deffense of his father’s work and demands to restore the oratory in the model prison.