Debussy wrote to his friend Pierre Louÿs: “Above all, bring me a guitar from which will escape, when sometimes struck, like a fine dust of sound from what it once contained of barbaric melancholy.”

Rafael Andia proposes here a look at the techniques and writings that have created the guitar and continue to determine the very particular history of his instrument: the flamenco or classical guitar, as well as that of the twentieth century or that of the Habsburgs of 1600.

The guitar dreamt of...