From Triana the gipsy singers and dancers

From Triana the gipsy singers and dancers would be called across the river for the parties of wealthy señoritos and bullfighters. They would come, too, to the popular cafés cantantes of the late nineteenth century, in the twentieth century, to the tablaos, the tourists shows. Then they were dispatched back across the bridge to their own side of town. Spaniards as a whole have never learned to love their gypsies – who are estimated to number 650.000. Even today polls show that many would rather not live beside them.
There are gypsies left in Triana, but nothing like there used to be. The melody has gone. Las Tres Mil was an excuse for a huge real-state scam. The gypsies were lured away from their forges and houses in the Cava de Los Gitanos and the chabolas on the edges of Triana.
They were promised brand new modern housing. Orders were issued for the demolition of their old homes, many with shared patios that acted as the centre of social, and cultural, life. The Cava of the civilians, the payo non-gipsy part of Triana, remained relatively untouched. Gleaming new blocks – their unimaginative name of “The three Thousand Homes” a giveaway to the bureaucratic nature of the project – way to the south of the city would keep them happy. It would also keep them out of sight and by extension, out of mind.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet