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Abstract
The vindication of the Gypsy as a hero in some works by Manuel Falla and Federico García Lorca and through the cante jondo competition of 1922 is well known to scholars. What is perhaps less known is that Falla and Lorca reacted against a long tradition of abusing Gypsies in the media, that peaked during the Restoration. This article analyses the cultural production that prompted Falla and Lorca to write in defence of the Gypsy, and pays particular attention to the work of Rafael Salillas, Eugenio Noel, and journalists writing in reaction to the rise of flamenquismo from the 1880s on.
Notes
1 For a discussion of this matter, see Timothy Mitchell, Flamenco Deep Song (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1994), 162–69; William Washabaugh, Flamenco: Passion, Politics and Popular Culture (Oxford: Berg, 1996), 31–53; Gerhard Steingress, Sociología del cante flamenco (Sevilla: Signatura, 2006 [1a ed. 1993]), 111–22.
2 Lou Charnon-Deutsch, ‘Travels of the Imaginary Spanish Gypsy’, in Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice, ed. Jo Labanyi (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2002), 22–40.
3 ‘Kasabal’ (pseudonym of José Gutiérrez Abascal), ‘La muerte de Gavira’, La Ilustración Ibérica, 788, 5 February 1898, p. 2.
4 Cited in Teresa Miri Larrubia, ‘Migrantes en las jóvenes sociedades industriales: integración y diferenciación social’, Historia Social, 26 (1996), 79–96 (p. 81).
5 Manuel Urbano, La hondura de un antiflamenco: Eugenio Noel (Córdoba: Ayuntamiento de Córdoba, 1995), 12–38; José Blas Vega, El flamenco en Madrid (Córdoba: Almuzara, 2006), 110.
6 Laura Otis, Organic Memory: History and the Body in the Late Nineteenth & Early Twentieth Centuries (Lincoln, NE/London: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1994), 4.
7 Joaquín Costa, Oligarquía y caciquismo (Madrid: Imprenta de los Hijos de M. G. Hernández, 1902), 86.
8 Ricardo Campos, ‘La clasificación de lo difuso: el concepto de “mala vida” en la literatura criminológica de cambio de siglo’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 10:4 (2009), 399–422 (p. 400). Here, and elsewhere, accents and spelling are as in the original quoted.
9 Cesare Lombroso & Gina Lombroso, Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso (New York/London: The Knickerbocker Press, 1911); Max Nordau, Entartung (Berlin: C. Duncker, 1892); Joshua Goode, Impurity of Blood: Defining Race in Spain, 1870–1930 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U. P., 2009), 143–79.
10 Daniel Pick, ‘The Faces of Anarchy: Lombroso and the Politics of Criminal Science in Post-Unification Italy’, Past and Present, 21:1 (1986), 60–86 (p. 66).
11 Pick, ‘The Faces of Anarchy’, 71.
12 Álvaro Girón, ‘Los anarquistas españoles y la criminología de Cesare Lombroso (1890–1914)’, FRENIA, 2:2 (2002), 81–108 (pp. 83–84).
13 Bénédict Morel, Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l’espèce humaine (Paris: J. B. Baillère, 1857), 1–47.
14 Max Nordau, Degeneración, trad. Nicolás Salmerón, 2 vols (Madrid: A. Marzo, 1902). See also Richard Cleminson & Teresa Fuentes Peris, ‘ “La mala vida”: Source and Focus of Degeneration, Degeneracy and Decline’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 10:4 (2009), 385–97 (p. 390); Lily Litvak, España 1900: modernismo, anarquismo y fin de siglo (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1990), 138–40.
15 Lou Charnon-Deutsch, The Spanish Gypsy: The History of a European Obsession (University Park: The Pennsylvania State U. P., 2004), 217–20.
16 Rubén Pallol Trigueros, Una ciudad sin límites: transformación urbana, cambio social y despertar político en Madrid (Madrid: Catarata, 2013); Ángel Bahamonde Magro & Julián Toro Mérida, Burguesía, especulación y cuestión social en el Madrid del siglo XIX (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1978), 42–47.
17 Blas Vega, El flamenco en Madrid, 7–8.
18 E. Inman Fox, ‘Spain As Castile: Nationalism and National Identity’, in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture, ed. David T. Gies (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1999), 21–36.
19 Rafael Salillas, El delincuente español: Hampa (antropología picaresca) (Madrid: Victoriano Suárez, 1898). Further references will be given in the body of the article.
20 Constancio Bernaldo del Quirós & José María Llanas de Aguilaniedo, La mala vida en Madrid: estudio psico-sociológico (Madrid: Imp. de Antonio Marzo, 1901), 131.
21 Francisco de Sales Mayo, El gitanismo: historia, costumbres y dialecto de los gitanos (Madrid: Victoriano Suárez, 1870).
22 María Dolores Fernández Rodríguez, El pensamiento penitenciario y criminológico de Rafael Salillas (Santiago de Compostela: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad, 1976), 75–86.
23 Andrés Galera Gómez, ‘Rafael Salillas: medio siglo de antropología criminal española’, Llull: Revista de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias y de las Técnicas, 9 (1986), 81–104.
24 Lombroso, Criminal Man, 90–91.
25 See Antonio Gómez Alfaro, The Great Gypsy Round-Up: Spain: The General Imprisonment of Gypsies in 1749, trans. Terence W. Roberts (Madrid: Presencia Gitana, 1993).
26 Fernández Rodríguez, El pensamiento penitenciario, 75.
27 Charnon-Deutsch, The Spanish Gypsy, 57–64, 94–103.
28 Bernard Leblon, Les Gitans d’Espagne: le prix de la différence (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985), 101–02; Angus Bancroft, Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe: Modernity, Race, Space, and Exclusion (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 16–17; Sharon Bohn Gmelch, ‘Groups That Don’t Want In: Gypsies and Other Artisan, Trader, and Entertainer Minorities’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 15 (1986), 307–30 (p. 309).
29 See, for example: Manuel Gil Maestre, La criminalidad en Barcelona y en las grandes poblaciones (Barcelona: Tipografía de Leodegario Obradors, 1886), 56; Blanca de los Ríos, ‘La gitana’, in Las mujeres españolas, americanas y lusitanas pintadas por sí mismas, ed. Faustina Sáez de Melgar (Barcelona: Juan Pons, 1881), 509–607 (p. 595).
30 Hungarian composer and folklorist Béla Bartók would put forward a very similar argument in several papers dating from 1911 on, in which he denied the Gypsies any creativity in the process of preservation and transmission of what he understood as Hungarian folklore. See Julie Brown, ‘Bartók, the Gypsies and Hybridity in Music’, in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music, ed. Georgina Born & David Hesmondhalgh (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2000), 119–42 (pp. 121–27).
31 For a list of his trips and lectures, see Eugenio Noel, El flamenquismo y las corridas de toros (Bilbao: Sabino Ruiz, 1912), 9. Further references will be given in the body of the article.
32 Eugenio Noel, República y flamenquismo (Barcelona: Antonio López, 1912). Further references will be given in the body of the article.
33 Eugenio Noel, Señoritos chulos, fenómenos, gitanos y flamencos (Madrid: Renacimiento, 1916). Further references will be given in the body of the article.
34 Alisa Luxenberg, ‘Over the Pyrenees and through the Looking-Glass: French Culture Reflected in Its Imagery of Spain’, in Spain, Espagne, Spanien: Foreign Artists Discover Spain, 1800–1900, ed. Suzanne L. Stratton (New York: Equitable Gallery, 1993), 11–32.
35 Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Memoria para el arreglo de la policía de los espectáculos y diversiones públicas y sobre su origen en España (1790) (Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 1999), 39.
36 See also Lombroso, Criminal Man, 63. Noel attributed this idea to Gina Lombroso, who had built on her father's work. Gina Lombroso departed from her father in other aspects, however, such as the use of ideas of degeneration. She identified signs of degeneration in the city's population, such as lack of physical strength, beauty or resistance to pain, as well as a greater propensity to contracting physical or mental illnesses (José Luis Peset, ‘Genio y degeneración en Gina Lombroso’, FRENIA, 1:1 [2001], 121–28). In conjunction with other Italian criminologists, she exposed women to different degrees of electroshock-induced pain in order to prove that they were less sensitive (Mary Gibson, ‘On the Insensitivity of Women: Science and the Woman Question in Liberal Italy, 1890–1910’, Journal of Women's History, 2:2 [1990], 11–41 [p. 11]).
37 Noel makes mistakes in the titles of several works which he cites, such as attributing Salillas’ Hampa to Blasco Ibáñez. It could well be the situation in this case, as I have not been able to trace this work.
38 Enrico Ferri, Criminal Sociology, ed. & trans. Douglas Morris (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895), 130.
39 Cesare Vigna, Intorno alle diverse influenze della musica sul fisico e sul morale (Milano: Edizioni Ricordi, n.d.), 33; my translation.
40 Vigna, Intorno alle diverse influenze della musica, 46; my translation.
41 Jonathan Robert Hiller, ‘Bodies That Tell: Physiognomy, Criminology, Race and Gender in Late Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Literature and Opera’, PhD dissertation (University of California, Los Angeles, 2009), 218–20.
42 See Fox, ‘Spain As Castile’.
43 On this topic, see Fox, ‘Spain As Castile’.
44 See Richard Cleminson & Francisco Vázquez García, ‘Los invisibles’: una historia de la homosexualidad masculina en España, 1850–1939 (Granada: Comares, 2011), 175–216.
45 Gil Maestre, La criminalidad en Barcelona, 66.
46 Adrian Shubert & Marina Sanchis Martínez, ‘En la vanguardia del ocio mercantilizado de masas: la corrida de toros en España, siglos XVIII y XIX’, Historia Social, 41 (2001), 113–26.
47 Shubert & Sanchis Martínez, ‘En la vanguardia’, 125; Noel, El flamenquismo, 9.
48 Mitchell, Flamenco Deep Song (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1994), 41–44.
49 Collin McKinney, Mapping the Social Body: Urbanisation, the Gaze, and the Novels of Galdós (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2010), 28–42.
50 Washabaugh, Flamenco, 31–53.
51 Sandra Álvarez, Tauromachie et flamenco: polémiques et clichés (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007), 35–43; Mitchell, Flamenco Deep Song, 42–43.
52 José Blas Vega, Vida y cante de Don Antonio Chacón: la edad de oro del flamenco (1869–1929) (Madrid: Cinterco, 1990), 74–76, 113–14.
53 Washabaugh, Flamenco, 33.
54 Álvarez, Tauromachie et flamenco, 35–43.
55 James Parakilas, ‘How Spain Got a Soul’, in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston: Northeastern U. P., 1998), 137–93 (pp. 153–59).
56 Florike Egmond, Underworlds: Organized Crime in the Netherlands, 1650–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1993), 93.
57 Jorge Uría, ‘La taberna: un espacio multifuncional de sociabilidad popular en la restauración española’, Hispania (Spain), 63:214 (2003), 571–604.
58 Álvarez, Tauromachie et flamenco, 37; my translation.
59 Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England (New Haven: Yale U. P., 2007); Teresa Fuentes Peris, Visions of Filth: Deviancy and Social Control in the Novels of Galdós (Liverpool: Liverpool U. P., 2003), 48–53.
60 Bernaldo del Quirós & Llanas de Aguilaniedo, La mala vida en Madrid, 131.
61 José Sierra Álvarez, ‘ “Rough Characters”: mineros, alcohol y violencia en el Linares de finales del siglo XIX’, Historia Social, 19 (1994), 77–96 (p. 80).
62 Sierra Álvarez, ‘ “Rough Characters” ’, 82.
63 Ricardo Campos, Alcoholismo, medicina y sociedad en España (1876–1923) (Madrid: CSIC, 1997), 25–32.
64 Álvarez, Tauromachie et flamenco, 37; Blas Vega, El flamenco en Madrid, 107.
65 Anon., ‘El crimen de hoy’, El Heraldo de Madrid, 8 February 1901.
66 Bernaldo del Quirós & Llanas de Aguilaniedo, La mala vida en Madrid, 40.
67 Anon, ‘Riña sangrienta’, El País, 24 November 1902.
68 Anon, ‘Escándalo en un café’, El Imparcial, 27 November 1902.
69 Anon, ‘Los cafés de cante’, La Dinastía, 16 November 1911; José Blas Vega, Los cafés cantantes de Madrid (1846–1936) (Madrid: Guillermo Blázquez, 2006), 293.
70 See Uría, ‘La taberna: un espacio multifuncional de sociabilidad popular’.
71 Anon, ‘Manifestaciones de los alcoholeros’, La Época, 28 June 1904; Anon, ‘Contra un proyecto. El cierre de ayer’, La Correspondencia de España, 29 June 1904; Anon, ‘Los alcoholeros. El cierre de los establecimientos’, El Imparcial, 29 June 1904; Anon, ‘Contra la ley de alcoholes. El cierre de tiendas’, El País, 29 June 1904.
72 Blas Vega, Los cafés cantantes de Madrid, 295–96.
73 Blas Vega, Vida y cante de Don Antonio Chacón, 91–100; Blas Vega, Los cafés cantantes de Madrid, 273–91.
74 Anon, ‘Tribunales. Bronca flamenca’, La Dinastía, 26 April 1901.
75 See Gmelch, ‘Groups That Don't Want In’.
76 Anon, ‘Sucesos. Riña en Fornos’, El Globo, 15 December 1901.
77 See Blas Vega, Vida y cante de Don Antonio Chacón.
78 René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U. P., 1989 [1st ed. 1982]), 17–18.
79 Walter O. Weyrauch, Gypsy Law: Romani Legal Traditions and Culture (Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 2001), 11–87; Thomas Acton, Gypsy Politics and Social Change: The Development of Ethnic Ideology and Pressure Politics among British Gypsies from Victorian Reformism to Romany Nationalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974).
80 Gómez Alfaro, The Great Gypsy Round-Up, trans. Roberts; Leblon, Les Gitans d’Espagne, 99–100; Teresa San Román, Vecinos gitanos (Madrid: Akal, 1976), 32; Susan G. Drummond, Mapping Marriage Law in Spanish Gitano Communities (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 41; Sales Mayo, El gitanismo, 29.
81 Rosemary Barberet & Elisa García-España, ‘Minorities, Migrants, and Crime: Diversity and Similarity across Europe and the United States’, in Minorities, Migrants, and Crime: Diversity and Similarity across Europe and the United States, ed. Ineke Haen Marshall (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997), 175–97 (p. 177).
82 Leblon, Les Gitans d’Espagne, 101.
83 Bancroft, Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe, 6–7.
84 Fernando Vicente Albarrán, ‘Los barrios negros: el Ensanche Sur en la formación del moderno Madrid (1860–1931)’, doctoral dissertation (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2011), 575–78.
85 Gmelch, ‘Groups That Don’t Want In’, 307.
86 Manuel de Falla, ‘El cante jondo: sus orígenes, sus valores, su influencia en el arte europeo’, in Escritos sobre música y músicos, ed. Federico Sopeña (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1958), 163–80 (p. 165).
87 Michael Christoforidis, ‘Manuel de Falla, Flamenco and Spanish Identity’, in Western Music and Race, ed. Julie Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2007), 230–41 (pp. 232–34).
88 Parakilas, ‘How Spain Got a Soul’, 189; see also the discussion in Samuel Llano, Whose Spain? Negotiating ‘Spanish Music’ in Paris, 1908–1929 (New York/Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2012), 147–51.
89 Carol A. Hess, Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898–1936 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001), 199–231.
90 See D. Gareth Walters, ‘Canciones’ and the Early Poetry of Lorca (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 2002).
91 Félix Herrero Salgado, ‘El gitano en la obra de Federico García Lorca’, Aula, 3 (1990), 9–20; Charnon-Deutsch, The Spanish Gypsy, 207.
92 Frieda H. Blackwell, ‘Deconstructing Narrative: Lorca's Romancero gitano and the Romance sonámbulo’, Cauce, 26 (2003), 31–46.
93 Christoforidis, ‘Manuel de Falla’, 234–36; Steingress, Sociología del cante flamenco, 115; Washabaugh, Flamenco, 31–53.
94 Charnon-Deutsch, The Spanish Gypsy, 205–08; Mitchell, Flamenco Deep Song, 165–70.
95 Federico García Lorca, ‘Importancia histórica y artística del primitivo canto andaluz, llamado “cante jondo” ’, in Eduardo Molina Fajardo, Manuel de Falla y el ‘cante jondo’ (Granada: Univ. de Granada, 1998), 177–208.
96 Christoforidis, ‘Manuel de Falla’, 236; Steingress, Sociología del cante flamenco, 135.
97 García Lorca, ‘Importancia histórica’, 177.
98 Mitchell, Flamenco Deep Song, 165–79.
99 Falla, ‘El cante jondo’, 165–68.
100 Concurso de ‘Cante jondo’ (Canto primitivo andaluz) (Granada: Editorial Urania, 1922), 3.
101 Álvarez, Tauromachie et flamenco, 71–74.
102 Annemarie Cottaar, Leo Lucassen & Wim Willems, Gypsies and Other Itinerant Groups: A Socio-Historical Approach (Basingstoke: Macmillan/New York: St Martin's Press, 1998), 19; Barberet & García España, ‘Minorities, Migrants, and Crime’, 180; San Román, Vecinos gitanos, 34–35; Charnon-Deutsch, The Spanish Gypsy, 129, 170; Bancroft, Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe, 35–41.
* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.