Promover and intervening in the famous ‘Conferences do Casino’, a literature historian, who introduced language studies and pedagogy in Portugal, Adolfo Coelho (1847-1919) was also — along with Teófilo Braga, Consiglieri Pedroso, Leite de Vasconcelos and Rocha Peixoto — one of the key figures in the constitution and the initial development of anthropology in Portugal. Roma (...) culture and language (...) are first and foremost curious ethnographic possibility: look at the exotic inside the observer’s culture. In fact; although they share the same civilisational and lingüist ancestors as their European hosts (...), the Roma have a social organisation very close to their Indian ascendant, better saying, hopefully and thus irreducible to the prevailing social morphology in Europe.