The fall in street vending impoverishes the gypsies of the Canary Islands

Vara explained that the central problem that he has detected is poverty. “It is a community that comes from having been living from street sales for generations, and some of its members managed to convert that street sale into another sedentary one, not only through the flea markets, but also had shops and businesses” he explained. “But one crisis after another, plus the pandemic and everything else, has caused a lot of people to end up in poverty,” he said. “And that alternative that was street vending no longer works as much as before,” he added. The result is that there are “difficult situations derived from the above, and in families that do not come from there, but from having been relatively well a few years or a few decades ago.”

The presentation was attended by representatives of different political parties; with the president of the Romí Camela Nakerar Association, Josefa Santiago, and with other members of the Roma community. The study consisted of conducting interviews with members of the entity chaired by Santiago. In total, 129 household heads were surveyed. “There were aspects that were only related to the head of the family and others related to the members of her family,” said the sociologist. Thus, he obtained data from 335 people, of which 176 were women and girls and 159 were men and boys.

“Basically, it has been asked about sociodemographic variablesbut also for other aspects”, commented Vara, who specified that in the Canary Islands there are important gypsy communities in Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote, while the former is where there is a greater presence. However, it is not known for sure how many gypsies reside in the Archipelago. According to the person in charge of the study, the reason is found in the frowned upon, and even in the illegality, of asking about ethnicity. Be that as it may, his calculations are that there may be around 9,500 people linked to this community on the Islands.

Improved diet

Among the data analyzed is the diet. In this area, the need for improvement has been observed, as well as the fact that three quarters of the products they eat come from their own resources or, what amounts to the same thing, shopping at the supermarket, while the remaining 25% comes from the Food Bank or from the vouchers distributed by the Romí Camela Nakerar Association. No less relevant are the conclusions regarding housing, where almost half of those surveyed demand an officially protected house.

The so-called energy poverty and technology are two other planes in which deficiencies appear. In this second respect, the stronghold of machismo that exists in relation to the use of smartphones by married women is striking –although the percentage is low–. In 6% of the study participants, it was found that men did not like their wives to have their own telephone. “Only 9% have a desktop or laptop computer,” Alejandro Vara stated, adding that almost half of the gypsies in the Canary Islands do not have these devices nor do they know how to use them. Instead, between 55% and 60% have profiles on social networks.

His analysis of the reality of Roma families living on the Islands also focused on racism and anti-Gypsyism. What was it that he found? One of the relevant data is that 62% of those surveyed answered that they had not suffered this problem during the search for employment. It so happened that those who affirmed that they had suffered it in some area of ​​their lives used to conform to the physical prototype of the gypsies.

Regarding the use of time and the assumption of household chores, Vara discovered that there is still a long way to go for the equality between women and men. It is the first that spend the most time shopping and, above all, doing housework. So much so that their daily average of 130 minutes dedicated to this last task contrasts with less than 20 for men.

Peddling

62% of the people interviewed worked in the street vending sector in the last year and for almost 25% it was the main source of income. Now, Vara has detected that in recent years this activity “is not giving them anything.” When asked for solutions to this problem, they usually propose the creation of markets.

“Since I don’t like the paternalism that it is the technicians who have to, based on the results, suggest the measures to be taken, I wanted to ask them what actions they would take to solve their problems,” said Alejandro Vara, who met with some answers that surprised him: «Contrary to the stereotype that there is always that they are complaining and demanding people, in almost all the problems they blamed themselves. From the lack of training they said that they have to study more; of the lack of employment, that they had to go out and look for more work; of the low salaries they have when they work, that they have to train more and fight more, “he pointed out.

The person in charge of the work sees positive elements. «The gypsy community comes from having had some high rates of illiteracy and school failure. There are entire generations that have not completed primary studies », he recalled. And he continued: “One of the things I discovered is that this trend is changing rapidly: once they have seen that street vending is no longer going to have a future, they are putting a lot of pressure on their children and grandchildren to study. They have gotten into their heads that they have to train and they are succeeding ».