?I am another,? wrote Rimbaud. This declaration could be taken as the founding paradox of the modern aesthetic, back in the 19th century, when the flamenco genre as such sprung from the industrial revolution and late Romanticism.

Travel. What better way to practice this ?being another? than to go on a journey, to speak another language, behave according to different customs, feel amazed, excited, leave one?s place and oneself behind.

Foreigners have always been an integral part of flamenco, from Romantic travellers to the ?guiris? or tourists who now fill Spain?s flamenco tablaos and shows of all kinds. Mi gustar flamenco very good is a book by José Luis Ortiz Nuevo that sheds light on their role: many of the earliest articles on flamenco were written by foreign writers, for example. We would know very little without them. What would flamenco be without that ?outsider? perspective?

As Pedro G. Romero says, there is a fundamental tension between the outside vision and internal codes ? the constant dialectic between exteriority, surface, movement and events on one hand, and the relationship with the past, patterns, and rigid text on the other. Both are dynamic constructions that mutually shape each other through performative interactions.

This list is dedicated to my favourite guiri, my Asturian-Australian friend N., a translator with flamenco blood, and to all of you.