RIGHTS-SPAIN: Court Ruling Leaves Gypsy Widow without Pension

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Dec 3 2002 (IPS) - A legal ruling denying a gypsy woman her right to a widow’s pension in Spain because she was married in a traditional gypsy or Roma ceremony drew howls of outrage Tuesday from human rights and social organisations.

”We are seeing a setback in the consolidation of human rights towards which we had made progress in recent years,” the president of the Federation of Progressive Women, Enriqueta Chicano Jávega, remarked to IPS.

The High Court of Justice in Madrid ruled Monday that María Luisa Muñoz, the widow of Mariano Dual, was not entitled to a widow’s pension.

Muñoz and Dual were married 30 years ago in a traditional gypsy ceremony, and had six children. Dual, who died in December 2000, was a construction worker employed by the same company for 19 years, during which time he paid his regular contributions to the social security system.

In the social security institute files, Dual figured as a beneficiary with dependents, while the ”libro de familia” – a legal document issued by the state indicating a family’s status – showed Dual and Muñoz as the joint custodians of their children.

When the social security system refused to pay her widow’s pension, Muñoz turned to the courts. In the court of first instance, Judge Francisca Arce ruled in her favour in June.

The decision was welcomed as a landmark verdict by social activists, since it stated that in Spain, ”the gypsy ethnic group has been firmly rooted from time immemorial. It is well-known that the ethnic group celebrates marriage ceremonies based on rites and customs that acquire the force of law between the parties.”

Marriages celebrated in any Christian church, in the civil register office, and – thanks to a recent legal amendment – officiated by city governments are all recognised in Spain. In addition, common-law partnerships, which in some regions can be domestic homosexual partnerships, can also be registered with city governments.

But neither that nor the fact that Muñoz and Dual were married for 30 years convinced the three High Court justices in Madrid. In the sentence published Monday, they ruled that only ”civil or religious” ceremonies could legally be considered marriages, and ”the gypsy marriage does not form part, in the current juridical order, of the nature of either.”

Chicano Jávega said the sentence was ”absolutely incorrect,” because the fact that the couple lived together for years in a state of matrimony was ”duly demonstrated.”

The president of the Foundation of Civil Rights in Spain, Carlos García Alvarez, told IPS that ”this sentence is an outrage, because the judges had clear and serious proof that (Dual and Muñoz) were living together as a family with their six children, all of which is demonstrated in their ‘libro de familia’.”

Journalist Pedro Simón wrote in the daily El Mundo that ”When (the late Salvadoran Archbishop) Oscar Romero used to say that ‘justice is like a snake, it only bites those who walk barefoot’, he was also talking about María Luisa Muñoz, a gypsy widow who has been left with nothing, not even the money to buy a pair of shoes.”

Muñoz lives in Pan Bendito, a poor neighbourhood in Madrid, and scrapes by selling flowers in the street.

Her neighbours have helped her out, while encouraging her not to give up. Meanwhile, she just presses her lips together, and pushes on with her struggle in silence

The Gypsy Foundation General Secretariat will represent Muñoz in appealing the Madrid High Court verdict to Spain’s Supreme Court of Justice.

According to Chicano Jávega, not only does Muñoz need help in pressing her own individual case, but activists must fight to get the law interpreted, and amended if necessary, in line with today’s ”new reality,” so ”this never again occurs.”

For his part, García Alvarez said ”the poor functioning of the public administration must be highlighted in this case, since the payment of the pension should not have been denied in the first place, and the case should not have had to go to the courts, much less enter into religious rivalries with an ageold institution like the gypsy culture.”

RIGHTS-SPAIN: Court Ruling Leaves Gypsy Widow without Pension

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Dec 3 2002 (IPS) - A legal ruling denying a gypsy woman her right to a widow’s pension in Spain because she was married in a traditional gypsy or Roma ceremony drew howls of outrage Tuesday from human rights and social organisations.
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