The Spanish anthem has no lyrics, so we have sung another one that has nothing to do with football: Nino Bravo’s
The Spanish anthem or Marcha Real is a rarity: it does not have official lyrics (although there are those who have tried to compose it, from José María Pemán to Sabina or Marta Sánchez), which gives it a solemn aura, but prevents the participation of the masses in festive environments. Like when you win a Soccer World Cup, except that people become helpless “lo lo lo lo.” However, the fans I needed a letter for chant and celebrate the champions and found it within a melodic 1972 song milestone that doesn’t mention football once. When did it start? ‘A kiss and a flower’ by Nino Bravo already played in stadiums in the United States and Mexico throughout the tournament, and ended chanted in unison by players and fans after the whistle that put an end to the same. At the airport, hours later, the public address system made it sound while relatives from both teams shared a terminal on the way home. The verse that circulated the most on networks was the one that opens the song: “When parting, a kiss and a flower, an ‘I love you’, a caress and goodbye.” The original. It was composed by José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero in 1972, with arrangements by Maryní Callejo, and it was number one on Los 40 Principales that same year, four weeks in a row. Its interpreter, Luis Manuel Ferri Llopis, better known as Nino Bravo, died in a traffic accident in 1973, when he was only 28 years old. This video clip that was filmed in the Balearic Islands For the Ministry of Information and Tourism it is the only color material that is preserved from him. Before this song, Nino Bravo had already triumphed outside of Spain: between 1969 and 1970 he recorded some sixty songs and his voice especially resonated in Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Chile and Colombia, markets where he shared the bill with Raphael without the divo overshadowing him in the slightest. That his repertoire (especially this one and ‘Libre’) is still alive half a century later in the stands and the streets is proof of how it has deeply permeated Spanish popular culture. What the lyrics are really talking about. The more extended reading He links it to the economic emigration of Franco’s regime: the years in which thousands of young people left “with the cardboard suitcase” for Germany, Switzerland or France in search of a salary that they could not find here (“I will leave my land for you, I will leave my fields and I will go, far from here”). That is why the song serves today, far from Spain, as an anthem of another exodus: in Cuba it is still associated with those who have had to leave the island in recent decades. The long relationship with football. In fact, Nino Bravo’s melody has been around for decades sneaking into Latin American standsalthough with the lyrics completely replaced. The fans of Barcelona SC, in Ecuador, adapted it to sing about his yellow uniform; Colombian Deportivo Cali did something similarand there is also a version for Independiente Medellín. In those cases the lyrics vary to encourage the team and the fans and launch the corresponding jabs at the rival. The Spanish case is special: there is no new or modified letter. The original is sung, which promises a return as the only very slight and common link with the circumstances of the competition. And be careful, the original letter does not distinguish flags. In fact, a curious phenomenon has occurred with it: despite its international significance, it has been chanted en bloc among Spanish players and fans because it has been judged in an intuitive and unspoken way that it is a genuinely Spanish anthem and that it represents us. Like the sun every morning. In Xataka | Argentina is clear that Argentina had to give away Argentina’s fourth World Cup. And no one in Argentina is very clear why.
