What does the Spanish chorus of The Clash song ‘Spanish Bombs’ mean?
Rising from the sticky floors of Covent Garden’s The Roxy Club, The Clash were a band firmly rooted in the revolutionary quality of punk rock. Nevertheless, they witnessed an enduring success and legacy not afforded to many of their contemporaries from those early days in the London punk scene. A predominant reason for this lasting success was the band’s ability to incorporate different styles and genres, including rockabilly, dub, ska and hip-hop. Never was this more obvious than on the seminal 1979 record London Calling.
You could quite easily drive yourself mad trying to examine each and every track on London Calling; there is so much content, hidden meanings and nuance contained within the tracklisting. Perhaps one of the most interesting tracks is ‘Spanish Bombs’, the opening track of side two. Whichever way you look at it, the track is something of a rarity within the discography of The Clash, seemingly detailing events of the Spanish Civil War and the plight of the left wing. As with most of Strummer’s writing, however, the more you look, the more you uncover.
Anybody with a basic knowledge of the Spanish Civil War will quickly realise that ‘Spanish Bombs’ is far from being a reliable historical source – indeed, it wasn’t meant to be. Strummer was reportedly inspired to write the song by reports of bombings in the tourist-centric Costa Brava by the Basque nationalist militia ETA. Drawing parallels between these bombings and the actions of the IRA in Britain at the time, Strummer began to write essentially a tourist travel guide to Spain through the lens of nationalist freedom fighters and the Spanish Civil War.
In that usual Strummer way, the songwriter effectively encapsulated the colossal premise, including all of its political complexities, into a three-minute punk track. In contrast to some of their earlier work, ‘Spanish Bombs’ is quite a light and breezy track, bordering on pop sensibilities, in contrast to its heavy themes. Part of what makes the track seem so sun-soaked is the chorus, sung in Spanish.
The recurring chorus of the track sees the band proclaiming, “Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito, Yo te quiero, oh mi corazón”, but what exactly does that mean? The direct translation is “I want you forever, I want you, oh my heart”, or “I love you forever, I love you, oh my heart” depending on the translation. In contrast, Strummer knew very little Spanish at the time he wrote the track and referred to the lyrics as “Clash Spanish” in the liner notes of London Calling’s 25th-anniversary reissue.
In fact, the original lyric sheet that accompanied the album suggested the lyrics to the ‘Spanish Bombs’ chorus are “yo t’quierro y nfinito, yot’quierro, o mi corazón”, which is essentially just Spanish gibberish. The vast likelihood seems to be that Strummer employed these vaguely Spanish-sounding words as a stylistic choice to reaffirm the themes of Spanish social and cultural history detailed in the rest of the lyrics.
Admittedly, without the light relief of the Spanish chorus, Strummer’s exploration of modern-day tourism, combined with the history of political upheaval, nationalist militias and the Spanish Civil War, might come across as somewhat heavy. ‘Spanish Bombs’ was not The Clash’s only flirt with the Spanish language, once again employing Strummer’s “Clash Spanish” on their smash-hit single ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ from Combat Rock – though those lyrics were created with the help of Joe Ely, so Strummer is not entirely to blame for the butchery of the language.