On 9 February 2026, Pedro Casermeiro, from Rromane Siklovne, appeared before the Parliament of Catalonia as part of the commissions of the Pact against Antigypsyism to address the relationship between antigypsyism and the education system.
Casermeiro is an educational psychologist and has professional experience as a teacher in both primary and secondary education. His intervention was presented as a focused contribution rather than an exhaustive analysis of all the dimensions of the issue. Instead, Casermeiro chose to highlight several key elements that he considers essential to understanding how antigypsyism is structured and expressed within the education system.
Casermeiro began with a central idea: antigypsyism cannot be understood simply as a collection of individual prejudices or discriminatory behaviours. It is a historical and systematic structure that, over centuries, has shaped Roma people’s access to rights, opportunities and prospects for the future. From this perspective, he warned against confusing the consequences of discrimination with its underlying causes.
Poverty, residential segregation, unemployment or disrupted educational pathways should not be viewed only as isolated problems to be “managed”. According to Casermeiro, many of these realities are also consequences of historical and political processes of discrimination. Addressing only their effects means managing antigypsyism rather than dismantling the structures that produce it.
During his intervention, he recalled that for centuries laws, ordinances and policies were developed specifically against Roma people, affecting their culture, ways of life, occupations and language. This history has contributed to establishing an unequal relationship between state institutions and the Roma people, which continues to have consequences in areas such as education, healthcare, social services and policing.
One of the central concepts of his intervention was cultural epistemicide: the historical process through which Roma people have been prevented from defining who they are and how they wish to be represented. For centuries, different narratives about Roma people have been constructed from the perspective of the majority society, often associating them with problems, deficits and negative stereotypes. This perspective has also entered the education system, where Roma students can be viewed through the lens of a “problem that needs to be solved”, rather than being recognised as part of a legitimate cultural diversity.
Casermeiro stressed that this criticism should not be directed at teachers individually. The problem, he argued, is fundamentally structural: teachers work within a system of knowledge, categories and practices that have also been shaped historically. This is why he called for a profound restructuring of the education system and for greater institutional humility in recognising what is not working.
School segregation was one of the central issues of his intervention. Casermeiro challenged the idea that the concentration of Roma students in certain schools can simply be explained by residential segregation. He pointed out that neighbourhoods such as La Mina, Sant Roc, La Mariola and Font de la Pólvora were neither planned nor built by Roma people, and that their existence is also the result of historical and political decisions.
For this reason, he argued that school segregation should not be treated as inevitable or “normal”. “School segregation is not normal,” he stated, calling for it to be addressed as a structural issue and as a priority for education policy.
The available educational data, according to Casermeiro, illustrate the scale of this inequality. Citing the 2023 report The Educational Situation of Roma Students in Spain, he pointed out that 62.8% of the Roma population does not obtain an upper-secondary qualification, compared with 4% of the majority population, while only 0.4% of Roma people hold higher education qualifications.
For Casermeiro, these figures cannot simply be interpreted as the “failure” of Roma children and young people. Instead, they should be understood as an indication that the education system is failing to guarantee equal opportunities and outcomes for everyone. The question, therefore, should not only be what is happening to Roma students, but what is failing within the system and what changes are required.
Among the measures he proposed were reviewing the location and distribution of schools, promoting socially and culturally diverse school enrolment, and providing training on antigypsyism to all public officials and professionals involved in education policy, not only teachers. He also called for greater participation of Roma people themselves in identifying problems and developing solutions.
The intervention left a clear message: educational equality cannot be achieved simply by managing the consequences of inequality. The structures that produce it must also be identified and transformed. This requires questioning what has been considered “normal” for too long and placing the fight against antigypsyism at the heart of education policy.
