My journeys into "deep" Spain along with my discovery of Anthropology awakened my desire to learn about different cultures in the hope that they would help me to undernstand my own. The distinctive features of the Spanish gypsies prompted me to choose them for this undertaking. This was in the early seventies.

I was unaware of the silent conspiracy which for centuries sought to draw a veil over their wanderings in Spain, but I soon dicovered that the few available books on the Spanish gypsies ranged from patronage to ethnocentrism, while the press hardly took any notice of them, only mentioning them in newspapers in connection with flamenco or crime reports.

As it seemed impossible for me to get the necessary information about the gypsies from conventional sources, the only remaining way to approach them was direct contact. I travelled to Merida in 1972 to establish headquarters there, convinced that my research would be easier with a group already integrated in a city.

Then difficulties arose that my enthusiasm and inexperience prevented me from foreseeing. I had been certain that my good intentions would be enough to enable me to approach the gypsies. At the same time, I had forgotten that their mistrust and lack of interest in the payo world were even more unsurmountable than our own disregard for them.

My aspirations to get to know their culture were received with skilful indifference that counteracted weeks of effort and reduced my work to going through municipal archives, asking information from some of the city's leading payos.

It was a time of solitude and apprenticeship which was tinged with disenchantment because even if I had been invited to some weddings and was beggining to be accepted by some of the young, the distance between me and the elders was as large as ever.

When I became a friend of Jesús in February 1973, things began to change. Jesús and I shared a common concern for gypsy society. Through him I met gypsies from Madrid, very differnt from the Extremadura gypsies in many ways. I was interested in his knowledge of his people, and I provided him with new viewpoints which helped him to understand his gypsiness in relation to the whole of Spanish society.

Almost at that time, I met some gypsies who had recently arrived from Extremadura. This meeting with Félix and his family favoured my relationships with gypsies from other districts of Madrid. The geographic and economic diversity of gypsy culture, as well as my new friedships, soon made me forget my bad experiences in Merida. Along with a notebook, photography was one of the tools I used from the beggining to carry out my project. The firts photographic images were, nevertheless, of poor quality, and less abundant than the writtings.

So, when I really "discovered" photography in 1973, I was astonished at the ease with which I gave up a whole year of field work to pursue the new approach I had been offered. To a great extent this pictures are the result of that profound change in my approach.

 

(Ramón Zabalza. From the introduction of the book Imágenes gitanas. Fotografías y recuerdos)