On International Roma Day, the Defensor del Pueblo reiterates its commitment to this group of people, stressing that it strives constantly to eliminate stereotypes and remove the obstacles that are still an impediment to their full integration and real and effective equality.
“Roma are full citizens in Spain” said the Defensora, Soledad Becerril, adding that “the Roma community has made significant progress, but there are still situations that need to be dealt with by the public authorities and society as a whole in order to pave the way for them to be able to exercise their rights on an equal basis with everyone else”.
The Defensor, in collaboration with the different associations striving for the integration of the Roma community, is taking steps to eliminate stereotypes and remove the obstacles that still stand in the way of their real and effective equality.
In 2015, the Spanish Royal Academy of the Language accepted the Defensor’s sugerencia suggestion that a usage note be included in its Dictionary warning of the “offensive and discriminatory” meaning of the terms “trapacero” (swindler) and “trapacería” (swindling) in the definition of the words “gitano” (gypsy) and “gitanada” (cajolery).
The Office has now initiated an inquiry at the Head Office of Family and Children Services (Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality) to establish what steps are being taken to encourage enrolment by Roma pupils in compulsory secondary education, from the findings published in the case study “Roma pupils in Secondary Education. A comparative case study” that reveals the high school dropout rate among these pupils.
The case study points out that the standards of education of Roma young people are lower than those of the population as a whole, with a rift that begins even before the end of compulsory secondary education, with just over 60% of Roma young people failing to successfully complete compulsory secondary education, and which gets wider progressively with the start of post-compulsory secondary education.
