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UNDERSTANDING SPAIN

Why does Spain’s national anthem have no words?

Why is it that when it comes to their national anthem Spaniards are lost for words?

Published: 23 February 2018 11:34 CET
Updated: 23 November 2022 11:39 CET
Why does Spain’s national anthem have no words?
Spain's Euro 2020 squad while their national anthem is played, having warmed up everything but their vocal chords. Photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP

Spain’s national anthem – La Marcha Real (the Royal March) – has been around for more than 250 years. 

But practically for that entire quarter century, it has remained without lyrics.

The bizarreness of this muted patriotic hum-along is best evidenced whenever Spain’s national football team goes against other sides whose players bellow the words with tears in their eyes – think France with their epic Marseillaise anthem. Meanwhile, the Spanish fans in the stands usually just sing lo-lo, lo-lo to the music. 

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and San Marino are the only other countries with no words to their anthems, but that can be somewhat understood given that they’re either relatively new or tiny nations. 

So what is Spain’s reason for having a wordless national anthem? 

Well, the main problem seems to be that Spaniards have never been able to make up their minds about which lyrics they liked most. 

The original anthem, written in 1761 by Manuel de Espinosa, was not composed as an anthem with lyrics, but rather to serve as a military march to provide a beat for the Spanish Infantry.

King Carlos III adopted the then-named Marcha Granadera as the official march of Spain in 1770 and it later became the official anthem. 

While lyrics have been written and used for the anthem in the past, none have ever been made official by the Spanish government.

During the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, the national anthem was given lyrics penned by fascist poet José María Peman, but those verses were dropped on the dictator’s death and Spain’s transition to democracy.

Scene from the 2019 movie While at War in which Franco’s soldiers appear to be singing different  sets of lyrics to Spain’s national anthem.

In an interview with the national radio of Spain (RNE) Pablo Iglesias, the then-leader of hard-left party Podemos said that lyrics for the anthem are meaningless if corruption and inequality stand in the way.

 “If we have a great anthem but the children are studying in barracks, if we have a great anthem, but the pension fund is emptied, if a good part of our young people have to emigrate …I like to be patriotic by putting emphasis not on flags or anthems but on public services,” said Iglesias.

READ ALSO: Why do many people see Spain’s flag as a fascist symbol?

The association the national anthem has with Spain’s royal family – which for the past nine years has seen its popularity tumble following corruption and other scandals – is not exactly strengthening the case for a common chorus uniting to celebrate tradition and monarchy. 

An attempt in 2008 by Spain’s Olympic Committee to set words to the music of the national anthem backfired and was quietly dropped after widespread criticism of the choice.

The lyrics chosen in a competition of 7,000 entries drew criticism with its opening line of “Viva España”, a phrase associated with the dictatorship of Franco.

In 2015, Madrid composer Victor Lago started a change.org petition with his lyrics that began with the words “Glory, homeland” but failed to win enough support to take it any further.

A year later and it was the turn of Guillermo Delgado Ortega, a composer who thought that he could win consensus with his verses focusing on freedom, peace and equality – without mentioning Spain at all. But that initiative was dropped too.

Then Spanish pop singer Marta Sánchez had a go in 2017, performing her rendition of the anthem complete with words extolling pride in Spain, a sentiment that was never going to go down well with more separatist regions, especially keeping in mind the political situation at the time.

“A very good initiative,” tweeted then Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

“The immense majority of Spaniards felt represented. Thanks, Marta.”

But with the Catalonian independence referendum held that same year, it was always going to be unlikely that lyrics approved by the government would receive support from many people in the Basque and Catalan regions.

Others have also tried and failed since. So is it realistic to think that Spain’s regions, politicians and people will ever decide to embrace the normality of having words to sing along to during the national anthem?  

“I hope not,” Francisco Layna, an author and professor of literature living in Madrid told The Local Spain.  

“I don’t like anthems, period. What I like the most about Spain’s anthem is precisely the fact that it doesn’t have any words.”

Antonio Escobar, a lifelong resident of Madrid’s Salamanca neighbourhood spoke about how the ongoing push for independence in Catalonia makes it unlikely that all regions will ever compromise. 

“With everything that’s gone on in Catalonia, the Spanish people have taken an introspective look at their country and what it means to be patriotic,” said Escobar. 

“We never saw the need for words, and it doesn’t mean we aren’t patriotic, it means that there wasn’t a need to express that patriotism so blatantly.”

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FOOD AND DRINK

Why does Valencia have so many blooming oranges?

Valencia has long been associated with the sweet orange fruit and there is even a type of orange that is named after the region. So why does the Spanish city have 12,000 orange trees and what's the history behind it all?

Published: 22 February 2023 10:02 CET
Updated: 15 March 2024 10:43 CET
Why does Valencia have so many blooming oranges?

Visit Valencia today and you’ll see that oranges are everywhere, decorating the façade of the old train station, orange trees line the city streets, and naranjas (oranges in Spanish) are even used in Valencia’s famous cocktail – agua de Valencia. 

In order to understand how Valencia became so entwined with oranges you have to trace the history of the fruit all the way back to ancient China.

According to food historians, they were created by crossing an early mandarin relative with a pomelo. The result was so successful that the fruit soon spread into southeast Asia, India and then the Middle East, where they caught the attention of the Moors.

READ ALSO: ‘What did the Moors ever do for us?’ How Spain was shaped by Muslim rule

There is evidence as far back as the 5th century AD of oranges arriving from north Africa. However, it is thought that they became commonplace in the Iberian Peninsula at the time of the Caliphate of Córdoba, which started in 929.

At first, the orange tree was used for ornamental purposes, to decorate patios such as the Córdoba Mosque and later the Patios de la Lonja in Valencia.

These oranges were not the type we know and eat today, they were very bitter and were often used as a condiment, for cleaning and preparing pork, and even for polishing copper and brass.  

These are still the similar type of orange that you see lining the streets of Valencia today, but these are not the ones that you eat or drink the juice from, these are either used for decoration or exported to places like the UK to be made into marmalade. 

READ ALSO: Seville brings back tradition of gifting Queen of England marmalade

While this explains how the bitter Seville orange arrived in Spain, there are two theories as to how the sweet variety we associate with Valencia came here.

“Orange buyers in Córdoba”, painting by Ángel Díaz Huertas (1902).
 

One suggests that it was when the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama sailed to India in 1497 and Portugal became the main exporter of the sweet oranges from this part of Asia.

Another theory is that Genoa in Italy maintained trading routes with the East because of its importance in the silk industry at the beginning of the 15th century and sweet oranges were imported this way instead.  

Whichever theory is correct, the first shipments of sweet oranges to be exported came from Lisbon, which at the time was the centre of all orange groves in Europe.

In the beginning, the sweet orange was only intended for the rich and in the middle of the 16th century, its cultivation was introduced in various places in the old Kingdom of Valencia, which included Orihuela, Xàtiva and Alzira, but for a long time, it did not go beyond being a tree planted in gardens and on the edges of fields.

During the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the Valencian citrus market was restricted to the region and was only sold seasonally, specifically at Christmas. Two of the main recorded early exports of oranges from Valencia were in 1632 when Xátiva sent around 500 loads of fruit, which included oranges and lemons to the Kingdom of Castille and then in the year 1717, when 68,000 lemons and 18,000 oranges were sent from Sagunt to Holland. Despite this, rice and silk were still the main exports from Valencia at that time.  

During those early years, it was actually the town of Soller in Mallorca that was a pioneer in exporting these sweet oranges to the south of France and Catalonia. It is said that many of the orange trees from Soller were transferred to Valencia due, mainly, to a plague of diseases, despite the fact that Valencia already had many of these trees of its own. Even though Soller may have exported oranges first, Valencia soon became more well-known for them due to the industrial revolution.  

But this is only half of the story, the other half can be attributed to the true cradle of the orange: the small town of Carcaixent in the Valencia region. Oranges had already been grown in Carcaixent since 1718 by the priest, Vicente Monzó Vidal who planted the first citrus field there. Together with a notary and an apothecary, he created the true Valencian sweet orange by grafting lemon trees with sweet orange trees brought from Murcia.  

Alzira and other municipalities in the region started growing these varieties too and soon orange groves spread along the entire Mediterranean coast.

France was the first foreign country to consume oranges from Carcaixent at the beginning of the 19th century. Soller had been the main exporter to France up until then, but Carcaixent soon took centre stage. In 1848, the Mallorcan businessman José Catalá Broseta, who brought oranges from Soller, set up a business to make orange containers in the old Carcaixent barracks and launched the beginning of what was to be Valencia’s cemented connection with the citric fruit.

Oranges piled up in a warehouse in Carcaixent. Photo: Vicenç Salvador Torres Guerola/Wikipedia

At the time, the main supplier of exports to England was still Portugal, while Valencia occupied a secondary position, its main market being France. It was thanks to Catalá, that the first large-volume export of Valencian oranges took place.

The first important export to England came in 1849 and in 1850 the first export of oranges to Liverpool took place in the Port of Valencia, which highlighted the need for more maritime connections. 

By 1871, 45,764 tonnes of oranges were exported from Valencia, which represented 75 percent of those from all over Spain, while in 1894, 140,000 tonnes were exported and twenty years later, in 1913, the half-a-million mark was reached for the first time.  

The main buyers at the beginning of the century were the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands and Valencia became a world leader in all things to do with oranges. 

One more thing – With millions of oranges so readily available in Valencia, you may be wondering if you can just pick one from the trees in the city and eat it up. 

Unfortunately, these bitter oranges are not deemed fit for consumption by Valencian authorities largely due to the city pollution they pick up.

Instead, the 420 tonnes of naranjas bordes that are collected every year in the ingenious way seen in the video above are used primarily as compost, but also in the production of essential oils and herbal teas (mainly the leaves for the latter).

There are simply so many oranges in the city that Valencia’s Town Hall is currently looking for alternative uses for them. If life gives you bitter oranges, what do you do with them?

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