ABSTRACT
The statement taken from a school composition written by a twelve-year old boy from Madrid embodies some of the key stereotypes through which many Spaniards portray those other awkward Spaniards, the Gitanos. In the early 1900s most Gitanos lived in the countryside, dispersed among the Payos in small groups of patrilineally related kin. Most were semi-nomadic and, in a manner reminiscent of Gypsy populations elsewhere, provided services to the non-Gypsies in a symbiotic system of relations that revolved around the Gitanos' high mobility. As a result of State pressures and through increasing competition with impoverished Payos, the Gitanos' favoured ways of earning a livelihood - those that allow them to control their own labour and time are becoming less and less profitable. Drug dealing appears to be a strategy that may permit the economic success of some kinship groups or individuals but that ultimately undermines the basis of the Gitano way of life.
