Narratives of the gypsy <em>awakening</em>. Religious innovation, gypsy leadership and identity politics

The Roma people are the largest ethnic minority in Europe (10-12 mill.) From the 1950s they began to congregate in Pentecostal churches across the continent, spreading and increasing structure and influence rapidly, especially in France and Spain. This article provides new data to analyze ethnic and religious phenomenon in the process of rapid growth, of American/African-American origin, that among the Spanish gypsy population shows its own peculiarities: a self-managed movement, alien to the conventions of Rom activism, political identity and public policies to promote minorities, and led by gypsy ministers or supported on a new narrative on primitive Gypsyism with biblical justification