Travels of the Imaginary Spanish Gypsy

Abstract

Abstract The portrayal of the Spanish gypsy provides a useful grounding for the study of discursive formations implicated in the evolution of European nationalisms. Spanish culture has had a dual relation with the master narrative of orientalism, both as a culture that has repressed a constitutive element of its historical identity, projecting it onto the figure of the exoticized gypsy (Colmeiro 1998), and one that has represented, from the 1700s onward, an exoticized Other to its northern European counterparts. To understand fully the role that the internal colonization of the Spanish Romany played in the construction of Spanish nationalism, cultural critics need to analyse the economic and productive forces that impinge on the discursive practices that participated in the construction of that identity.