Catalan Gypsies, Unique and Embattled, Resist as Homes Are Reduced to Rubble

First it was the 20 old houses demolished several years ago. Then 13 more 19th-century houses came down in June, wrought-iron balconies and all, leaving only bare asphalt baking in the summer heat in Perpignan, a city near France’s border with Spain and close to the Mediterranean coast. Finally, the residents of the city’s old Saint Jacques district had endured enough. Well over 50 dwellings in their neighborhood had been reduced to rubble since 2015. Late last month, they gathered in the district’s ancient square high on a hill, as a city excavator was making another mess of bricks and jagged wall fragments nearby.