Spain National Anthem

The Marcha Real has no official words, and it never has had any. Spain shares that distinction with only a handful of countries, among them Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. The melody was already in use as a military march in 1761, long before anyone tried to set words to it.

Words have been written more than once. Eduardo Marquina produced a version in 1927 for the silver jubilee of Alfonso XIII, and the poet José María Pemán wrote the best known text in 1928 at the request of Miguel Primo de Rivera. Neither was ever made official, and the Pemán text became associated with the Franco years, which is part of why the question is still delicate.

The most prominent recent attempt came in 2007, when the president of the Spanish Olympic Committee asked for words so that Spanish athletes would have something to sing on the podium. A competition drew about 7,000 entries, and the winning text, by Paulino Cubero, was leaked to the press on 11 January 2008, ten days before its planned presentation. Its opening cry, '¡Viva España!', had an authoritarian ring for many on the left, and five days later the committee withdrew it, saying it lacked broad support in Spanish society. The deeper obstacle is consensus: Spain has several official languages and seventeen autonomous communities, some of which reject the idea of a single national identity, and that makes any agreement on words hard to reach.