The notion of forastero has its etymological origin in the Catalan word foraster . The concept refers to someone who comes from or is a native of another place (that is, from a place different from one's own).
For example: "There is unrest in the town since a group of mysterious strangers have arrived and are trying to escape from the neighbors..." , "Sometimes I feel like I am a stranger in my own land," "A chronicler must look at the reality of his country with the eyes of a stranger .
A stranger, therefore, arrives from outside . This is an individual who resides or is in an area to which he is not native or in which he does not live in a stable or fixed manner. A man born in Germany is a stranger in Paraguay , to cite one case. The same goes for an Iranian woman in South Africa .
The term is usually used in small towns in which a foreign person attracts attention or, at least, is quickly detected by the neighbors. In a big city, with massive movements of people, migrations and tourist activity, it is difficult to discover who is a stranger. Many of the citizens, in fact, may have been born elsewhere and have settled in the locality a certain amount of time ago.
This term is not commonly used in everyday speech, although it is very likely that most people know it and understand its meaning without problem. If we look it up in a thesaurus, we find a moderate list of words, some more normal than others, but all with the same connotation: strange, foreign, unknown , exotic, alien and foreign . Without a doubt, the latter is the most used in popular language, since it clearly reflects the two meanings mentioned in the previous paragraphs: "who comes from outside" and "a person who lives in a place where he was not born." .
Other terms in this list of synonyms, however, point to the third meaning recognized by the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy: "alien, strange." In this framework we have exotic and unknown ; The first of them expresses a much greater degree of rarity in the object or subject to which it can be applied, since the second simply denotes that the speaker has encountered it for the first time and that until then he did not know of its existence.
The life of a foreign individual is not always easy, as there is a long list of challenges that they must overcome to settle and lead a comfortable life in their new home. Firstly, there are linguistic barriers, which represent a significant obstacle even between two countries where the same language is spoken; In fact, in these cases the difficulty may be greater than in others, due to the need to "relearn" the meaning of many of the most common words.
The cultural differences that can be seen in everyday life also make it difficult for a foreigner to integrate : from the conventions of gestural communication to job search, through the characteristics of public transportation and business hours, life abroad is Much harder than most people think when packing their suitcase. Perhaps the biggest challenge is accepting the uprooting and adapting to what the new place has to offer us.
In some countries, the idea of outsider is used as a synonym for visitor , especially in the field of sport : "Deportivo San Antonio defeated Atlético Amanecer as an outsider," "The team led by Marcos Trattomonte achieved a draw as an outsider." in his last presentation .