Spain faces Belgium in the World Cup quarter-final tonight. If you've been watching Spain's previous games, you may have noticed that the Spanish players have their lips firmly sealed while their anthem is played before kick-off. Are the players sulking? Or do they just have a really bad memory? The reason is a little more complex.
Spain's national anthem, the Marcha Real (Royal March), dates back more than 250 years, and has no lyrics. Spain is one of only four countries whose national anthem is entirely instrumental, alongside San Marino, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo.
The reason for this lies partly in the anthem's origins, according to Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas, a historian at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Written in the 18th century during the Bourbon monarchy, the Marcha Real was intended for military parades and royal ceremonies rather than public singing.
On top of that, he said, there has always been nationwide disagreement over what the lyrics should contain.
Several attempts have been made over the years to give the Marcha Real words. One notable example came in 1928, when writer José María Pemán wrote lyrics for the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, in which he, amongst other things, romanticised the colonisation of the Americas.
While dictator Francisco Franco officially adopted the version without text as Spain's national anthem during his regime (1939–1975), Pemán's lyrics never gained widespread recognition or popularity, as they were never more than a recommendation.
“Not even the regime's most ardent supporters sang it,” Núñez Seixas told us. “They preferred Cara al Sol, which emerged during the Spanish Civil War as the unofficial anthem of the nationalist movement.”
The opposition, in turn, sang a parodic version of the Marcha Real during the dictatorship. In it, Franco's 'white butt' was attributed to his wife washing it with the detergent brand Ariel.
The issue resurfaced in 2007, when the Spanish Olympic Committee organised a nationwide competition to find suitable lyrics. After choosing one entry from roughly 7,000 submissions, the committee abandoned the project just five days before its scheduled launch due to fierce public backlash. The lyrics were said to be too banal or too reminiscent of the Franco regime, among other things. Instead of uniting the Spaniards, the song failed to convince anyone and only provoked rejection.
No serious effort has been made since. “Every proposal has ultimately failed,” Núñez Seixas explained. “No one has found a way to reflect all of Spain's different identities and political sensitivities in a single text.”
That challenge remains particularly difficult in a country where many Catalans, Galicians, and Basques are wary of language that presents Spain as a single, unified nation. At the same time, some on the political left continue to associate the anthem with the monarchy and the legacy of Franco's regime.
“The question is: which shared values should be emphasised in the 21st century?” Núñez Seixas wonders. “Peace, freedom, and equality? Even those liberal values are not universally agreed upon.”
Beyond white butts and the political infighting over lyrics, at least there's still football. “If there’s one thing that helps bridge our political divisions, it’s the success of the national football team.”