El Dénia Castle It is inextricably linked to the history and memory of the Spanish Gypsy people, since for a few months it became a prison for those women, girls and children under 7 years old captured in the Great Raid against the Gypsies in 1749, decreed by King Ferdinand VI.
On July 30, 1749, the day of the Great Raid, more than 10.000 gypsies were arrested throughout Spain. Those captured in the Kingdom of Valencia and surrounding territories were imprisoned in Alicante and Dénia. Women, girls and children under 7 years of age - an estimated one thousand - in the castle Denia.
The 275th anniversary of their release (in October of that same year) is now being commemorated, and the Autonomous Federation of Gypsy Associations of the Valencian Community (FAGA), in collaboration with the Dénia City Council, has organised a celebration "not to promote hatred, but rather to remember the strength and resilience that has existed since the Gypsies arrived on the peninsula in 1425," says Abraham Santiago Jiménez, head of the FAGA delegation in Alicante.
El February 7 (postponed by DANA) Manuel Martínez, PhD in History from the University of Almería and one of the greatest experts on the history of the gypsy people, will give the lecture “Never again. Tribute to the women victims of the Great Raid and the extermination project of 1749”. It will be at 19:30 p.m., in the Dénia Library (c. Sant Josep, 6).
El February 8At 12:00 noon, a celebration, open to the public, has been organised in Dénia Castle to commemorate the liberation of the girls, boys and women imprisoned there during the Great Roundup.
The Department of Archaeology and Museums of Dénia City Council has included in the communication proposal that the Castle already has, two commemorative panels that will be placed that day next to the walls of what was that provisional and improvised prison.
One highlights the construction, together with the North Battery of the castle of which it was part, of an infantry barracks, in a context of renovation and modernization of the old medieval fortification, started around 1597 under the auspices of Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, Duke of Lerma and V Marquis of Dénia. That the infantry barracks became a detention center or improvised prison for gypsies and children is an unequivocal matter and is thus demonstrated by historical cartography, with a plan from 1811 existing that calls the old military construction Jitanas Barracks or Pavilions. Or the testimony of Mosén Francisco Palau, who echoes it in his work The Llobarro of events related to the French War in Dénia, referring to the 'Gypsy House' and offering details that establish its location in the old infantry barracks.
A second panel will act as a memorial, bearing the names of the prisoners and their daughters and sons: a reminder of those human beings who were confined by intolerance and who Dénia is now rescuing so that they will always remain in the collective memory.
The panel includes a quote from Father Palau who, although he was only a six-year-old child on August 15, 1749, became a first-rate witness and source of exception when he attested to the arrival that day of "parties of Gypsies who were captured in the cities, towns and places of the kingdom of Vª and Murcia […] dividing the men from the women."
Great Ferdinand VI