“I am very excited. This year’s Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts seems rounded to me. And it is for many reasons. First of all, it unites Carmen and me in the same destiny; we have been friends and traveling companions for many years and our memory knows a lot about what it means to be cultural professionals. It allows us to share emotion, happiness and the same responsibility we have always had for our personal and collective heritage. But above all, it unites us in deep gratitude for the Princess of Asturias Award, which, by recognizing us as creators, places flamenco art, one of the paradigms of contemporaneity that best define us as a country, as what it is, a wonderful expression of our cultural identity, tied to the land but touched by the grace of universality”.

María Pagés