Abstract
This article analyzes the journalistic discourse on the Roma people in Spain, covering the period from 1981 to 2010, when the print press was preeminent. The study focuses on three newspapers with different political orientations: El País, ABC, and La Vanguardia. It is presented as a multi-method study based on critical discourse analysis. The quantitative stage identifies specific term collocations in a corpus of over 1.5 million words, while the qualitative phase examines in depth a series of particularly prominent headlines. Nomination and predication strategies are reviewed, as well as elements related to the denial of racism. The overall analysis shows that presupposition and delegitimization have shaped representations of Roma in Spanish quality press, adapting and intensifying as this group became associated with international migration.
Keywords
Introduction
The Roma, referred to in Spanish as gitanos both by the group itself and by wider society, have been present in Spain since at least 1425 (Aguirre Felipe, 2006: 9). The Spanish government declared 2025 the year of the Roma People to commemorate 600 years of their documented presence. The Roma people originated in India, and their exodus may have begun 1500 years ago (Mendizabal et al., 2012: 2342). Over time, the gitanos have often been associated with the image of Spain and its folklore (Leblon, 2001). However, the social image of this group remains delicate. In its construction, the mass media play a relevant role (Gallardo Paúls, 2013, 2018), as they shape social meanings through their messages (Hart, 2010). Among them, the quality press is particularly influential in shaping social discourse (Van Dijk, 2003), contributing to widely shared representations and affecting communicative conditions and ethnic consensus (Van Dijk, 2003, 2016). This research examines the role of quality press in Spain in the contemporary representation of Romani people. It analyzes a long period using quantitative and qualitative techniques within a critical discursive framework.
The study period begins in 1981 and ends in 2010. The year 1981 is of interest because it was a critical moment for Spanish democracy, as there was an attempted coup d’état. The Spanish Constitution had been promulgated in 1978, and it explicitly established the equality of all Spaniards before the law, when Roma people did not have that right before (Rothéa, 2014). In turn, 2010 would be marked by the expulsions of Romani immigrants from Eastern Europe in France by the Government of Nicolas Sarkozy, a precedent of the response that would later be given to different refugees throughout Europe (Arango et al., 2017). It was speculated that those expelled by Sarkozy could end up moving to Spain (Oleaque-Moreno, 2017). This period also corresponds to the peak influence of the print quality press in shaping social representations in Spain (Caldevilla Domínguez, 2013), before its decline with the rise of digital media.
Context and framework
The Roma are the largest and oldest Spanish and European ethnic minority. The figures in Spain are very imprecise, but it is estimated that there may be between 800,000 and 1,500,000 individuals (de la Rica et al., 2019). Across Europe, their number may reach 11 million (Mendizabal et al., 2012: 2342). At the beginning of the 15th century, the gitanos were thought to be nomadic penitents. Over the following centuries, highly discriminatory laws were enacted and remained in force until the 1978 Spanish Constitution. Even today, the usual image identifies them as culturally different and associates them with flamenco music and naturalized marginalization (San Román, 2012: 29). Spain has been referred to by the European Commission as an example for Roma integration (Galarraga Gortázar, 2010) compared to other European countries, where, especially in the East, they are seen as outcasts (Tileagă, 2005: 603). Nevertheless, the educational gap of the Roma population in Spain is significant, and school dropout rates actually increased from 63% to 87.5% between 2012 and 2022 (Alemany, 2023). Moreover, in 2022, up to 532 explicit cases of discrimination against Roma were recorded (Fundación Secretariado Gitano, 2023).
The general view of the Roma people reflects ethnic representations, and vice versa. Rodrigo Alsina and Martínez Nicolás (1997) studied newspapers from Spain, Italy, France, and the UK. Van Dijk (2009: 28) analyzed how Spanish newspapers adopt editorial positions aligned with political parties, highlighting negative ethnic traits. Tortajada (2011) and López Catalán and Aharchi (2012) noted that references to Roma from Eastern Europe tend to magnify these traits. Journalistic representations linking gitanos to conflict emerge during various social tensions (Oleaque-Moreno, 2017: 212), consistent with findings across Europe and the UK (Breazu and Machin, 2018; Clark and Campbell, 2000; Goodman and Rowe, 2014; Mǎdroane, 2011; Okely, 2014; Richardson and O’Neill, 2012; Schneeweis, 2012). As a counterpoint, Van Dijk (2021, 2023) emphasizes countering discursive racism through social movement discourse. This requires social sensitivity from journalists within a broader humanistic training approach (Baviera, 2011), although this may conflict with the demands for immediacy and the volatile dynamics of the Spanish and European press.
Objectives
The main objective of this article is to analyze the discursive representation of the Roma people in the contemporary Spanish quality press over the period 1981–2010. Specifically, the study aims to identify the linguistic terms the press associates with the Roma as a group, and to analyze the underlying discursive meanings in journalistic representations of the Roma, with a particular focus on the possible persistence of ideological biases over time.
Methodology and data
The research combines quantitative and qualitative methods. The Spanish media outlets selected were El País, ABC and La Vanguardia, influential newspapers with recognized circulation despite the ongoing decline of the print press. In 2023, El País distributed an average of 52,024 copies per day, La Vanguardia 49,267, and ABC 34,199 (Asociación de la Prensa de Málaga, 2024), with similar figures the following year. The three outlets represent different socio-political positions (El País, centre-left; La Vanguardia, centre-right; ABC, traditional right).
Seven socio-politically representative periods for the Roma people were defined. For the 1980s, 1981–1982 and 1988–1989 were selected, marking key moments of Roma associationism in Spain. For the 1990s, 1994–1995 (economic crisis following the Barcelona Olympics and a series of scandals affecting the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party government of Felipe González) and 1998–1999 (end of the decade and the shift towards conservatism under the government of José María Aznar) were chosen. For the early 2000s, 2003–2004, 2007–2008 and 2009–2010 were analyzed, a period marked by a Socialist government from 2004 onwards, as well as by the consolidation of global immigration trends. The migration of Roma from Bulgaria and Romania to Western Europe gained media attention due to persecution in Italy (2008) and France (2010), raising concern within the European Union and fears of displacement towards Spain. Within these periods, the years with the highest number of texts containing gitano/gitana (singular) and gitanos/gitanas (plural) were selected. These morphologically gender-marked forms were all included in the corpus queries. In the analytical voice of this article, “Roma” or “Romani” is used as the general term; however, “Gypsy” is retained in translations and quotations to reflect the original journalistic usage.
A first quantitative analysis was conducted using AntConc (Anthony, 2024). The texts were downloaded in PDF format from digital newspaper archives, converted into Word format using ABBYY PDF Transformer, and subsequently into TXT files. The Collocates function in AntConc was then applied. Following Baker et al. (2008), collocations—understood as the tendency of words to co-occur within a given span—were identified within a ±5-word span around the search terms gitano, gitana, gitanos, and gitanas.
These collocations were identified in a corpus of 1,603,557 words across 1,406 texts. Figure 1 shows their distribution by newspaper for the years with the highest publication volume.
Number of texts about the Roma in ABC, El País and La Vanguardia in the years with the highest number of publications in the periods analyzed.
Following the quantitative analysis, a qualitative approach was applied to the headlines of representative journalistic articles, reflecting editorial focus and allowing the analysis to remain within the article’s space limitations. Three were selected per decade, within the monthly publication peaks, resulting in nine headlines with accompanying elements such as subheadings, highlights, and leads. These excerpts do not necessarily contain the terms gitano/gitana/gitanos/gitanas identified in the quantitative analysis, but these appear in the full articles. The selected headlines belong to the longest and most prominently featured articles during peaks, making them representative in extent and structural prominence. Article length varies considerably: sometimes a quarter page suffices, while in other cases, articles extend to several pages and often appear on the front page.
We first define which macropropositions and subtopics dominate in the compiled headlines, the first step in the critical discursive analysis, relevant for reviewing possible ideological meaning (Van Dijk, 2003). Discursive strategies typical of the discourse-historical approach are then analyzed. It gives importance to the historical and diachronic perspective around the construction of a discriminatory discourse, through the positive self-presentation of us and the negative presentation of the others (Reisigl and Wodak, 2015). The approach includes various strategies. Due to the need for concretion in the article, and due to its adaptation to the objectives of the study, we will focus on referential or nomination strategies, and on predication strategies. Nomination strategies construct in-groups and out-groups through naming, while predication strategies qualify social actors or actions via stereotypes, predicates, metaphors, hyperboles, implications, and other evaluative terms. Analysis of these strategies reveals underlying meanings in journalistic representations of Roma over time. The study also considers communicative resources associated with denial of racism (Van Dijk, 1992, 2003: 64), such as justifications, euphemisms, blaming the victim, and presuppositions. Presupposition is crucial for uncovering naturalized ideologies, as inferences taken for granted depend on participants’ knowledge, beliefs, and the editorial line shared with readers (Polyzou, 2015: 123; Van Dijk, 2004: 202).
Results of the quantitative approach
In the quantitative analysis based on collocations extracted with AntConc, we observed that El País contains the largest number of texts in the corpus (648), followed by ABC (597) and La Vanguardia (416). 1
The most prominent collocation in the three newspapers is “families”, which appears 396 times. In fact, “Gypsy families” is the most common way of constructing members of the ethnic group as a collective, without clarifying whether they are actually related. In addition, “clan” (71 collocations), “gangs” (68), “race” (110), “ethnicity” (103), and “camps” (95) also stand out.
These terms construct Roma people as a distinct social group, with meanings linked to the criminal milieu (in the case of “clan”) or to a racialized and tribal imaginary. Terms related to immigration (“Romanian”, 198 times; “immigrants”, 150) and with unfavourable concepts such as expulsion (72) or illegal (60) appear with much greater insistence. We find far fewer collocations with a more constructive meaning such as “schooling” (12) or “solidarity” (9).
Throughout the 1980s, the newspaper ABC uses more terms about the flamenco scene, such as the name of the artist “Camarón”. In El País, on the other hand, terms referring to housing in exclusion, such as “chabolas” (slums) or “solar” (vacant lot), are used much more. In the same sense, La Vanguardia highlights areas of Barcelona with neighbourhood conflicts (“Ripollet”, “Riu Sec”). Throughout the 1990s, in the three media outlets, different terminological variants such as “re-housing” or “mediators” place the Roma in the universe of social assistance.
In the 2000s, from slum dwellings or folkloric elements, there is a shift towards connections between migratory references and conflict-related lexical items such as “emergency” and “disturbances”. The use of terms that focus tension on the Roma, such as “problem” or “deportation”, is common in the three media outlets. Table 1 shows the ten most frequent terms published by each newspaper in the last period studied, 2009–2010.
Most frequently used collocations within the 2009–2010 period in the analyzed newspapers, by frequency of appearance, and translated from Spanish.
Results of the qualitative analysis
A critical discursive analysis of nine headlines and their accompanying elements—drawn from broader journalistic texts and, as outlined above, selected for their length and structural prominence—is presented chronologically below. 2
Headline: Manzanita, in the city of dead ducks. Introduction: They call him Manzanita, the nephew of Caracol, and he is a handsome Gypsy who goes crazy when it rains or falls in love, and then drives the Gypsy girls and the payos [non-Roma people] crazy in return. And the fact is that all Gypsies are sentimental, whether weaving wicker baskets or selling bedspreads [. . .]
The headline of Excerpt 1 and the textual introduction (which lacks a lead-in that precedes it, appears directly after the headline, and, due to space limitations, only the first lines are provided here), come from a profile about a famous flamenco-pop singer, “Manzanita”. This journalistic profile, occupying half a page, appeared in the ‘Show Business’ section and was signed by Ignacio Ruiz Quitano. Based on the approaches that Van Dijk has carried out on the representation of the Roma in Spain (2009), at the macrostructural level, the text constructs a macroproposition that can be summarized as Gypsies and difference, focused on cultural aspects that make them different from us. In this case, it is specified in a subtopic, flamenco and ethnicity, which exalts a racial connection with this music. In referring to the macropropositions identified in the texts, we retain terms such as “Gypsy” and “slum” in order to reflect—and critically engage with—their use in Spanish media representations of this ethnic group.
The nomination strategies identify the group of us (that is, the majority population aligned with the newspaper’s editorial stance and readership) as “payos”, which is how Spanish Roma refer to members of mainstream society. The Roma are represented as the others through figures such as “Manzanita” or “Caracol’s nephew” (Manolo Caracol, a famous flamenco artist). This othering is also expressed in the generalization “all Gypsies” and in descriptions such as “handsome Gypsy”. Female ethnic delegitimization appears with “Gypsy girls”, a condescending diminutive. In fact, through predication strategies, we observe that the “Gypsy girls” are willing to go “crazy” for the Gypsy man. It is also indicated that the members of our group (“the payos”) go “crazy” for Manzanita, but there is no condescending use of that fanaticism here. There are more notes of the spell that Manzanita casts as an artist, through poetic evocations such as “the city of dead ducks”: this is how New York appears in the book Poet in New York, by the poet Federico García Lorca, close to the gitanos and their symbolism. More of the bohemian stereotype is used when collectivizing that “all Gypsies are sentimental, whether weaving wicker baskets or selling bedspreads”. These are very traditional work situations, which have ended up as acts of survival, but which make “Gypsies” feel “sentimental”. Such references allow, through presupposition, the denial of racism: by inferring that these jobs satisfy ethnic sensitivity, it removes the socio-political responsibility of mainstream society for the lack of access to modern work for the Roma. They are presented as a group stuck in the past because, it is suggested, they are comfortable there.
Headline: A town in Lleida rejects the company of a Gypsy colony. Lead-in: A neighbourhood assembly voted to hire armed pickets to expel the Gypsies.
The headline of Excerpt 2 focuses on the topic Gypsies and threats, and the subtopic tension around slum-dwelling Gypsies. In this case, they are temporary Roma linked to the collection of onions in a town in Lleida, Catalonia. Although the digital newspaper archive does not reproduce the layout, the number of characters exceeds the equivalent of one page, as part of the important ‘Spain’ section. Its author is signed as M. Barroso.
Through nomination strategies, the group of us is specified via a metonymic construction that helps to deny racism by institutionalizing and diluting responsibility for discriminatory acts. Examples include “a town in Lleida”, “a neighbourhood assembly”, and “armed pickets”. The group of the others is represented as “a Gypsy colony”.
Predication strategies justify an objectively negative action (rejecting people who come to work), assuming that the others arrive as a detachment of settlers who are going to establish themselves in the town. The use of “rejects” presupposes that a “Gypsy colony” is a threat, and that something must have happened for “a town” to rise up against it, in a strategy of blaming the victim. The lead-in persists in the euphemistic elaboration that denies racism: it is indicated that “an assembly of residents voted to expel the Gypsies”. However, there is an action outside the law, although here it is framed as part of a mitigation strategy: it refers to “hiring armed pickets”, a euphemism intended to soften the perception of paying groups of armed individuals. Beneath all of this, the group of the others appears as the verbal object of rejection and expulsion.
Headline: Ripollet requires Riu Sec Gypsies to have a medical certificate to attend class. Lead-in: The City Council wants to guarantee the health of students to avoid an outbreak of racism.
Excerpt 3 is from the newspaper La Vanguardia, published in Barcelona (the other two are from Madrid). It occupies nearly half a page and again aligns with the semantic macroproposition Gypsies and threat, as well as the specific subtopic tension around slum-dwelling Gypsies. It is a prominent text in the ‘Education’ subsection of the ‘Society’ section. The author is Josep Mercadé.
Through nomination strategies, the group of us is constructed via metonymy. The toponym “Ripollet”, a town in the province of Barcelona, enhances and legitimizes the municipal authorities, thereby helping to negate racism by presenting discrimination as a localized rather than a generalized issue. “City Council” appears as another metonymy, which in turn confers importance on local political authorities. As for the others, they are referred to only as “Riu Sec Gypsies”, linking them to a very modest local area.
In the predication strategies, the group of us appears as active, while Roma people, as passive. A medical certificate is “required” for Roma children to be admitted to class, a demand that presupposes these minors’ ability to obtain such documentation, yet effectively separates Roma children from the school. As minors living in slums and in conditions of severe exclusion, it is extremely difficult for them to access any certificate. Through a strategy of blaming the victim, the demand is presented as necessary to “avoid an outbreak of racism”, thereby denying racism on the part of the mainstream society. The presupposition thus suggests that the “Gypsies of Riu Sec” themselves would ultimately be responsible for such an outbreak.
Headline: The City Council dismantles Los Focos toilet market and relocates its vendors. Lead-in: The shacks and stalls were hindering the development of the future Las Rosas industrial estate. Introduction: Toilets are no longer sold on Avenida de Daroca. The toilet market, run by squatters in Los Focos (San Blas), was dismantled by the City Council, and its vendors, ten Gypsy families, were relocated.
Although the digital newspaper archive does not reproduce the layout in this case, the headline of Excerpt 4 belongs to an article of approximately 3,000 characters (including spaces), corresponding roughly to a quarter of a page in the newspaper. It is published in the ‘Madrid’ section and authored by L.F. Durán and B. Aguirre. It fits, once again, with the macroproposition of Gypsies and threat, and with the specific subtopic tension around slum-dwelling Gypsies. The headline, the lead-in and the beginning of the introduction explain the dismantling by Madrid City Council of an informal street market of toilets located in the same area of shacks where the traders live.
In the nomination strategies, the us group appears once again metonymically through “City Council”, thereby generating an institutional patina of legitimacy. The others are first indicated as “vendors”; then, with the delegitimizing categorization “squatters in Los Focos”; finally, with the collectivization “ten Gypsy families”.
Through predication strategies, it is indicated that “the City Council dismantles the Los Focos toilet market”. With recourse to presupposition, it is inferred that this is a hygienic action of us to eliminate an unhealthy trade of them. An apparent compensatory action is exposed for those affected as a denial of racism: it is indicated that the City Council “relocates” the “vendors”. But by eliminating the area of shacks, although accommodation is given to “ten Gypsy families”, they are removed from an option to survive, that of the market that served as their livelihood, and without an alternative in return. Everything will be justified because “the shacks and the stalls were in the way” of “urbanising the future Las Rosas industrial estate”, thereby denying racism again. Thus, in contrast to “shacks” and “stalls”, discursively associated with the others and with the poverty of Francoist Spain, the verb “urbanise” is mobilized to index the modernity of the present of us. Which will come with the “future Las Rosas industrial estate”.
Front page headline: Mourning the death of Lola. Headline of inside feature: She died in the arms of her secretary, Carmen Mateo. Introduction: Lola Flores, “La Faraona”, died yesterday, at the age of seventy-two, surrounded by her family. The world of art, music and culture has suffered a huge blow. At twenty to five, one of the most emblematic characters of Spain in this century, one of the most artistic stars in the world, ceased to exist [. . .]. Sidebar headline: Thousands of admirers visited the chapel of rest during the day and early morning.
The main headline of Excerpt 5 appears on the front page, and links directly to a two-page inside news report that includes a sidebar. Due to space limitations, only the first few lines of the extensive introduction of the body of the journalistic report are provided here. The text was published in a section created for the occasion, named as the front page headline, and its author is José Arenas. The general macroproposition is Gypsies and difference (understanding in this case the folkloric stereotype as that difference). It then fits into the subtopic flamenco and ethnicity.
The headlines pay tribute to Lola Flores, the Spanish flamenco dancer par excellence, as well as an actress and singer. Of Romani origin, she died after an illness. With her discursive representation, we would be faced with a hybrid identity: Lola Flores would be assumed as a folkloric emblem of Spain, beyond her ethnic essence. The nomination strategies identify the group of us, with “thousands of admirers”, and with “the world of art, music and culture”. The group of the others, in terms of Roma representation, is concentrated on the figure of Lola Flores, who in the textual body of the journalistic article will be referred to as a “dark and beautiful Gypsy”, although this does not appear in the headlines. She is referred to as “Lola”, a familiar form of address that suggests a sense of closeness, as well as “Lola Flores” and “La Faraona”, an artistic nickname. Through the use of hyperbole, she is described as “one of the most iconic figures in Spain in this century” and “one of the most celebrated artists in the world”.
In the predication strategies, the group of us appears active in the desolation, showing itself impacted by the end of a figure that it considers unique. Thus, the headline, although with the subject elided, suggests that it is mainstream society that is “mourning the death of Lola “, and that “thousands of admirers” are the ones who “visited the chapel during the day and the early morning”. It is indicated that our cultural world “suffered” with her death. As for the representation of Lola Flores, it is indicated that “she died in the arms of her secretary”; that is when “she ceased to exist”. The artist not only died, but ceased to be with us in the world, as a great exception among the Roma in Spain as a group, without the rest being able to be identified with her.
Front page headline: Lola Flores leaves the stage forever. Headline of inside feature 1: Lola goes to heaven. Headline of inside feature 2: Popular commotion over the disappearance of an unrepeatable figure. Sidebar headline: The artistic continuity of the clan.
Excerpt 6 is published in the ‘Culture/Show Business’ section of La Vanguardia on the same day as Excerpt 5 from ABC. The authorship is divided between Darío Muñoz and the collective signature “Redacción” (Newsroom). The selected headlines comprise a special feature consisting of two one-page reports, including a sidebar, along with the newspaper’s front page. As the monthly peak—and even the exact day—of publication of the La Vanguardia excerpt coincides with that of ABC (unlike El País), the topic and subtopic also align: Gypsies and difference, and flamenco and ethnicity. In the nomination strategies, direct references to us are elided. The group of the others is represented by “Lola Flores”. As was the case in ABC, her Romani origin is explicitly mentioned in the body of the feature article, but not in the headlines, where she is presented as a symbol of mainstream Spanish identity, thus consolidating a hybrid discursive representation of her identity. In fact, she is referred to simply as “Lola”, which conveys a sense of closeness; the hyperbolic constructions “an unrepeatable figure”, move away from the usual vision of ethnicity. But her Romani family, by contrast, is referred to as a “clan”, a term that, outside marginal contexts (where it denotes gangs), is usually applied to closed, insular, almost tribal family groups.
Next, the predication strategies expose the group of us as prisoners of a “popular commotion”. Regarding the others, Lola Flores is represented through a Christian metaphor: “Lola goes to heaven”. Meanwhile, the family “clan” faces the challenge of maintaining “artistic continuity” in her shadow. All this, through presupposition, which makes her mythical, prevents her from being identified with the usual image of the Roma, as was also the case in ABC.
Kicker (front page and inside feature): The Europe of contrasts. Headline (front page and inside feature): Street babies in the big city. Subheading (front page and inside feature): Begging by Romanian women carrying their children on their backs is on the rise.
The headline and accompanying journalistic elements of Excerpt 7 correspond to a two-page report, referred to on the front page. The text is published in the ‘Society’ section, linked to the macroproposition Gypsies and threat, and to a specific subtopic: Gypsies and immigration as a social issue. The text, signed by Eduardo Martín de Pozuelo, exposes ethnic begging linked to East European Romani women in Barcelona, accompanied by children. Lola Flores, as we have seen, was represented as an exalted Romani female artist, whereas these migrant ethnic women are now subject to processes of delegitimization.
The nomination strategies specify our space as a “great city” and as a “Europe of contrasts”: the last construction functions as a kicker, that is, a line appearing above the headline. It is a euphemistic construction that denies racism, which it calls “contrasts”. For the others, the categorization “street babies” is used: the presupposition implies that they are newborn children living on the street, which creates alarm due to the contrast between both contexts (coming into the world / living on the street). Women who beg are classified as “Romanian women”: their Romani condition is not addressed (which will be referred to in the body of the text), and a resource is composed to deny racism through ethnic avoidance.
With predication strategies, our “great city” is immersed in the presence of “street newborns”. A polarization is created between us, linked to modernity via “Europe”, and the others, who bring with them a tribal “begging” with mothers who “carry their child on their backs”. The construction “child on their backs” establishes dehumanization: what is carried “on their backs” are bundles, not children. The presupposition portrays them as victims of their own mothers, one of the most entrenched taboos in our society.
Front page headline: War of the marginalised in Roquetas. Front page subheading: Riots between Gypsies and sub-Saharans following the murder of a young black man in a neighbourhood of the town of Roquetas, Almería. Headline of inside feature: Nights of fire and blood in Roquetas.
Excerpt 8 takes the form of a one-page news report, highlighted on the front page and published in the ‘Spain’ section of the newspaper. The author’s signature has the initials H.H. The topic is Gypsies and threat, specifying the subtopic Gypsies and immigration as a social issue. Regarding nomination strategies, the us group consists of the majority population of Roquetas, town in Almería (Andalusia), as well as the inhabitants of a “a neighbourhood”. The members of the others are categorized as “marginalized”, as “Gypsies and sub-Saharans”, and as “a young Black man”. With the “sub-Saharans”, categorization is based on geographical origin and skin colour; the “Gypsies”, white and Spanish in this case, are categorized according to their ethnic particularities, thereby establishing a clearly defined distance from the us group.
Predication strategies reinforce a victim role for Roquetas de Mar. The others are delegitimized through war metaphors, which portray them as responsible for a “war of the marginalised” and absolve the majority society of any racism by framing minorities as inherently violent. Finally, they are said to trigger “nights of fire and blood”, a hyperbolic phrase evoking an atavistic, extreme violence.
Cover headline (special feature): Expelled from ‘paradise’. Cover subheading (special feature): A thousand Romanian Roma are the first to suffer the new rigours of France against irregular immigration. Headline of inside feature: Sarkozy’s broom campaign. Headline of sidebar 1: Cursed even in their own country. Headline of sidebar 2: More and more towards Spain.
Excerpt 9 comes from a five-page special feature, which includes a major feature and complementary sidebars. It is linked to the newspaper’s front page and published in the ‘Sunday’ section, which provides a comprehensive review of the week’s current affairs. The authors are Ana Teruel, Naiara Galarraga, and Lola Galán.
Again, the topic is Gypsies and threat, with the subtopic being Gypsies and immigration as a social issue. Romania and Bulgaria were already part of the EU at that time. France’s expulsion of EU citizens in 2010 defined European policies towards refugees. It had a major impact on Spain due to geographical proximity (in 2008, the Berlusconi government in Italy had already persecuted the Roma), and the Spanish government at the time, in the hands of the PSOE, represented the opposite of that.
Through nomination strategies, the group of us is not literally referred, but it is evident which environment defines it: “paradise”, a metaphor of Western Europe that unites it with the Christian Eden. We identify two subgroups within the others. The first includes the French government (represented by the metonym “France”) and its president, Nicolas Sarkozy, toward whom El País is highly critical in the textual body of the report. The second subgroup comprises the Roma, collectivized in the discourse as “irregular immigration” and as “a thousand Romanian Roma”. Emphasis is placed on the geographical condition, rather than on ethnicity, which exercises the denial of racism. However, on the other hand, the others are later metaphorically categorized as “cursed” in Romania because of their ethnic origin.
Predication strategies, through presupposition, represent the group of us as a majority society integrated into the West. In this sense, within the first subgroup of the others, “Sarkozy’s broom campaign”, is a metaphoric construction related to sweeping dirt, which the presupposition relates to the expelled Romani people. And with the metonymy of the subheading, in which “France” applies “new rigours against irregular immigration”. A euphemistic construction, linked to bureaucratic and administrative language, functioning as a denial of racism.
Empathic predication strategies are used regarding the tribulations of the Roma, as seen in the expressions “the first to suffer” and “being expelled from paradise”. The latter invokes a Christian metaphor, connecting their destiny to that of Adam and Eve and thereby presupposing an original sin inherent in those expelled. Consequently, the immigrant Romani people are metaphorically “cursed even in their country”, referring to Romania. An underlying discursive blaming the victim is present: if they are “cursed” at origin, this curse is carried with them as they move progressively toward Spain.
To illustrate this, Table 2 summarizes the main resources identified in the qualitative analysis of all excerpts.
Summary of the qualitative analysis carried out on examples of the representation of Gypsies in the Spanish press between 1981 and 2010.
Discussion and conclusion
This article analyzes the journalistic representation of the Roma people in recent Spanish history through quality press that shape broader media agendas and long-term discursive legacies. Findings show predominant lexis associated with conflict and misery. Discursive analysis of headlines and subtopics reveals delegitimization, except for occasional folkloric framings. Roma people, whose representation aligns with dominant discursive configurations, are associated with the archaic, tribal, folkloric, racialized, and past-oriented, constructed as remnants despite their continued presence. Mainstream society contrasts as progress, modernity, and future-oriented, naturalizing Roma exclusion. In the 1980s, Spanish Roma were portrayed as poor, segregated slum dwellers; occasionally linked to flamenco. By the 1990s, representations shifted towards slum eradication and institutional assistance, alongside occasional folkloric framings exemplified by the diva Lola Flores. In the 2000s, alarm focused on new Roma: Eastern European Romani immigrants, stigmatized as economically marginalized. And the ethnicized female figure was associated with precarious migration, in contrast to the Lola Flores archetype of earlier times.
Migration is framed within a self-absorbed Western European context. Anti-Roma racism in Spain is largely absent, instead being displaced onto distant contexts such as Romania. Through hyperboles, metaphors, euphemisms, and presuppositions, a denial of racism can be identified, implying Roma responsibility. Headlines reflect mainstream editorial perspectives: ABC sustains folkloric archetypes, whereas El País becomes increasingly critical. However, representative headlines rarely highlight positive Roma social contributions beyond flamenco. The methodology employed to achieve both quantitative and qualitative representativeness has proven effective in meeting the research objectives. The findings show that the quality press in Spain has not eliminated a long-standing notion of conflict and suspicion towards Roma people as a group; rather, it has diachronically adapted this notion to contemporary contexts through editorial lines, underlying discourses, and their evolution. The absence of consistent deontological standards in the representation of Roma people has thus shaped the trajectory of an influential form of representation. In light of these findings, it is necessary to call for an improvement in ethical standards—particularly at the level of discursive meanings—that entails meaningful intercultural advances. This is especially urgent in view of the ethical challenges already faced by the online versions of the quality press analyzed.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.The author notes that, although he has worked for many years as a journalist and has published reports on the Roma community in one of the media outlets included in the analysis, his own articles were not included in the corpus and therefore do not affect the analysis.