A Romani woman in Eurovision: ethnic and gender stereotypes in the reception of Remedios Amaya (1983)

ABSTRACT

Remedios Amaya was the first Roma woman to represent Spain at the Eurovision Song Contest. Chosen because of her ethnicity, Amaya’s Romani heritage was meant to commemorate the Samudaripen/Porajmos (Romani Holocaust) in the year Munich hosted Eurovision (1983). Despite efforts to foster an image of modernization and progressive values, the hostile reception that followed her performance being awarded zero points contributed to the perpetuation of various stereotypes of Romani women. Analyzing press reviews of Europe’s most popular music program, my aim is to explore the perceptions of non-Roma commentators with regard to the selection and reception of a Romani singer as Spain’s representative. Looking at reception studies and stardom, this article will analyze the intersection of ethnic and gender stereotypes in relation to a female Roma artist during the early years of Spanish democracy. It will explore the hypersexualization and exoticization of Amaya’s TV performance, which revived the image of the Gitana, a trope that under Franco embodied the image of an idealized Spain. Widely exploited by the tourist industry, Roma culture (or more precisely, the naturalization of certain stereotypes assigned to Gitanos) was blamed for reviving the association with the recent dictatorship, thus displaying the persistence of Spain’s unresolved past and ambivalent cultural identity that still destabilizes Spaniards with regards to their status in Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• Television
• nationhood
• stardom
• gender studies
• ethnic stereotypes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Rafael Buhigas Jiménez and Patricia Galletti, and to the other members of the Círculo de Estudios Gitanos, for their careful reading of an earlier version of my manuscript. I am also grateful to Lola Visglerio for her bibliographical suggestions and to the anonymous reviewers whose comments have improved the original. Writing this piece has been possible thanks to the Programa de Atracción de Talento, Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2020-T1/HUM-20231.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 “Roma” is an umbrella term employed in EU policy reports and academic texts to refer to these groups of Indo-Aryan origin. While “Gypsy” is considered a slur, Romani people of Spain have reclaimed the term gitano, which is used in the text as a synonym for Spanish Roma. “Gyspy” is also used to refer to the stereotyped character, often played by a non-Roma actor.

2 In 1978, three out of four Romani households were substandard, but the figure had dropped to around 4 percent by 2011 (Rodríguez 2011, 49).

3 Social inequalities are still evident. Before the 2008 economic crisis the rate of relative poverty was 77 percent among Spanish Roma and 17 percent for the rest of the Spanish population. Severe poverty rates were 37.5 and 3.4, respectively. See: Tasas de pobreza comparativas, Encuesta Foessa, 2008 (Laparra Navarro 2009).

4 Peret starred in twelve films: “Sus películas son puro entretenimiento … y sirvieron para apoyar el éxito de su música. Es un cine fruto de la época –el desarrollismo, el boom del turismo, el franquismo … – con el que Peret supo ganarse al público, demostrando que tenía las claves de la cultura popular de entonces” (Agüero and Jiménez 2020, 163).

5 This was the reason given by the Director of Programming of RTVE, Ramón Gómez Redondo, behind choosing Amaya according to Diario 16 (1983, 2). Other Spanish newspapers published the same information throughout April 1983.

6 In an interview prior to the contest, TV presenter Mercedes Milá seemed shocked by Amaya’s illiteracy and skeptical about her academic abilities: “Es cierto que estás estudiando, que a duras penas puedes escribir? / Pues sí, estoy aprendiendo ahora. / Y ¿te cuesta? ¿Es un poco tarde? / Qué va, nada, nada. No es tarde”. “Soy gitano”, from Ochéntame … otra vez (Concejero 2015a, 00:20:45). See also: “Soy una gitana que está aprendiendo a leer. De pedir limosna por las calles a cantar en Eurovisión” (Gracia 1983, 46).

7 The figure represents more than half of the Roma population in the territories occupied by Germany (Hancock 2002, 34).

8 The statement can be retrieved from Euro-visiones. Ochéntame … otra vez (Concejero 2015b).

9 My thanks to Rafael Buhigas Jiménez for pointing this out to me.

10 Spain’s worst results after Remedios Amaya’s were Lydia Rodríguez (last position, 1999); Soraya (second-to-last, 2009); El sueño de Morfeo (second-to-last, 2013); and Manel Navarro (last, 2017).

11 See the articles “Eurorrisión” (Elena 1983, 47); “El ridículo televisivo” (Editorial 1983, 2); “Spain, zero points” (García Rivas 1983b, 47); “TVE naufragó en Televisión” (H.F. 1983, 40); “La derrota de la eurocanción, ‘gloriosa’” (El Diario 16 1983, 82).

12 Manolo Escobar starred in a similar role near Concha Velasco in Pero … ¿en qué país vivimos? (1967). At the beginning of the movie there is a singing competition between two candidates: Escobar, who represents the Spanish tradition, and Velasco, who represents the new wave of modernity, influenced by British music. I thank an anonymous referee for pointing this reference out to me.

13 According to Moreno Garrido and Villaverde, the Ministerio de Información y Turismo reawakened nineteenth-century Andalusian stereotypes to characterize the entire country (2019, 115).

14 The supposed backwardness of the language (see, for instance, Manuel Rodríguez Illana’s Por lo mal que habláis, 2019) is the primary reason Spaniards manifest the phobia against Andalusian culture. Antonio Burgos summed up the issue, albeit from a right-wing position, in Andalucía, ¿tercer mundo? (1976).

15 See for instance “El éxito 30 años después de naufragar en Eurovisión” (Donat 2013).

16 Amaya wore in Eurovision the same striped dress from the promotional video. In this video, she walked barefoot on the sand of a beach.

17 Some examples of the stereotypes concerning Roma women are found in: Champagne (2002); Charnon-Deutsch (2004); Hancock (2008); Woods Peiró (2012); and Berná Serna (2019).

18 See for instance Charo del Rey (1983).

19 See De Diego (2008).

20 For instance, one line read: “abrázame con furia de huracán, el fuego de tu amor será como un volcán”.

21 Officially known as Prisión General de Gitanos, it was orchestrated by Zenón de Somodevilla y Bengoechea, I marqués de la Ensenada, with the intention to exterminate all Roma people in Spain by imprisoning men and women separately to prevent the continuation of their lineage.

22 Newspaper La Nueva España (2023) summarized the reactions on social media. Feminist Roma NGO Fakali criticized the article on Twitter.

23 In fact, “Eaea” was not a flamenco song, as was pointed out on social media by Romani activists and musicians of the stature of Israel Fernández.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Atracción de Talento de la Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid [grant number 2020-T1/HUM-20231].

Notes on contributors

Lidia Merás

Lidia Merás is a film historian with an interest in contemporary art. She has published widely on European cinemas, gender studies and documentary. Since 2002, she has served as the member of the editorial staff of the film journal Secuencias. Before joining Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Merás taught at Royal Holloway (University of London), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) and Universidad Carlos III (Madrid). She currently leads the research project “DocRoma” on the representation of the Spanish Roma in documentary films, television and new media.