Amy's Robot

¡Viva España!

Apparently Spanish athletes are getting sick of having a national anthem with no words. They are stuck singing "dum dee dum dee dum" when the cameras pan over them before sporting events. So the Spanish Olympic committee has sponsored a contest to make up some lyrics. They've picked a winner (watch and listen) and everyone hates it. One of the criticisms is that the lyrics are reminiscent of Franco's lyrics, another is that they are totally bland and could apply to any country:

“Long live Spain!” the four-verse anthem begins. “Let us all sing together with different voices and a single heart! Long live Spain! From the green valleys to the vast sea.”

“It’s absolute drivel,” said Josep Ramoneda, director of the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona. “It could be about any country: Belarus, Lithuania, Spain.”

“It would make a good theme tune for the Eurovision Song Contest,” he added, referring to Europe’s annual pop music gala.

It reminds me of the Welsh anthem, sample quote:

O land of the mountains, the bard's paradise,
Whose precipice, valleys lone as the skies,
Green murmuring forest, far echoing flood
Fire the fancy and quicken the blood

Apparently parliament is very unlikely to approve the new words, and athletes will be stuck with dum dee dum dum.

categories: International
posted by Cushie at 3:43 PM | #