Dolores Vargas "The Earthquake"

(Barcelona, 1936 - Valencia, 2016)

The Calderón Theater in Madrid witnessed the beginning of her career as a dancer and singer, there together with her brother Enrique Castellón Vargas (The Gypsy Prince) she sang her first songs. He became popular with songs like Achilipú, A Tu Vera, Porom Pompero, Macarrones or Se va a Covadonga. La Terremoto is considered an artist of great versatility, who experimented with different rhythms.

Matthew Maximoff

(Barcelona  1917-1999)

Romero writer. Maximoff was born in Barcelona on January 17, 1917, but lived in France where his relatives arrived from Russia at the end of the 20th century. His works were written in the Kalderash dialect and in French. He was interned in the French concentration camps, arrested for being a gypsy. His first work (Las Ursitory) was translated into 14 languages, of which there is only one unpublished version in the Romani language.

His books constitute an invaluable work from the point of view of testimonials and memories, at the same time it represents a bridge built to make two worlds meet: that of the Roma and that of the non-Roma.

In 1961 he became an Evangelical Pastor, translating the New Testament into the Romani language.

Ian Hancock

(Inglaterra, 1942)

Naciò en Inglaterra, es uno de los principales contribuyentes en el ámbito de estudio romaníes. Hancock ha publicado más de 300 libros y artículos sobre la población y el idioma romaní. Estos trabajos analizan al pueblo romanì, no solo a través de la lingüística, sino también a través de la historia, la antropología y genética. Como profesor de la Universidad de Texas, ha sido nombrado “doctor honoris”. La razón de tal nombramiento es por su contribución al desarrollo y promoción de la lengua gitana, así como de la cultura e historia del pueblo gitano. 

ronald lee

(Mont-Royal, 1934 - 2020)

Rosemary Canadian writer, linguist and activist.

He started as an activist in 1965 through the "Kris Romero" (internal judicial meeting Rome) trying to foster a better understanding between Roma and non-Roma to combat prejudice in the written press.

In the 1970s, he cooperated in helping Roma refugees from the Communist Eastern Bloc and the former Yugoslavia. Together with Yul Brynner, Ian Hancock and John Tene they had a meeting at the United Nations on July 5, 1978 for the approval and creation of the International Roma Union, which was achieved a year later. In 1997 he initiated, and was one of the founders of, the Roma Community and Support Center (Toronto) and the Western Canadian Rosemary Alliance (Vancouver 1998).

In his later years, Ronald taught a course on the "Romero Diaspora" at the University of Toronto.

Terezia Fabianova

(Žihárec, 1930 -  Prague 2007)

One of the most important Roma writers, poets and composers. He spent his childhood in a Roma settlement in southern Slovakia. After the outbreak of World War II, his family was captured by the Hungarian army. She received only three primary school classes, an event that she relates in the autobiographical narrative "Sar me phiravas andre school" (How I went to school). Tera Fabianová is one of the first authors who began to train in the Romani language. In the "Roman Lion" he was assigned a special section where he could publish a selection of his poems in 1979, songs, stories and part of his prose in the anthology "Kalí Vodis" (black head).

In 2006 she was awarded the Mileny Hübschmannové Prize for her entire literary career.

Nina Alexandrovna Dudarova

(Moscow, 1903-1992)

Poetess, teacher, playwright, pedagogue and writer.

Author of the first Roma language primer in 1928. One of the first Roma to publish her writings. She was a recognized translator for different classic works into the Romero language. In 1926, under the direction of MV Sergievsky, with the participation of N. Pankova, the development of a gypsy alphabet began. In addition to her pedagogical activity, she contributed to the emancipation of women through numerous conferences on teaching, pedagogy, literature, the fight against religion, hygiene and health. He published his poems in the almanacs of the time. She was in charge of the design of the didactic contents for the teaching of literature in the Romani language in Russia.

Helios Gomez

(Barcelona, 1936 - Valencia, 2016)

In his artistic career he made above all various pictorial works, poems and posters of an anarchist and communist nature. As well as works in ceramics, design, illustration, performance and flamenco dance.

At the end of the Civil War (1936-1939) he was sent to French and Algerian concentration camps, where he played the role of a "gypsy" in Spanish folk productions that were filmed in Nazi Germany.

Between 1945-46 and 1948-54, he was once again confined in the Barcelona prison "La Modelo", where an exhibition of his drawings was held, and he painted a fresco in a cell that served as an oratory for those sentenced to death, and which was renamed the “Gypsy Chapel”.