Let’s talk about symbols of Spain.
I recently started using a new logo for my podcast, Spain to Go.
Since I started making episodes of the podcast, back in the summer of 2020, a lot has changed. One of the biggest things is that I stopped drinking.
So every time I’d make a new episode, I’d be kind of annoyed by the wineglass logo.
(The logo was made by Morena’s brother, actually, and it might have been sangría. I think I gave him a list of things he could use, and suggested Spanish flag colors – yellow and red. Hence the red wine – or sangría – with the slice of lemon.)
Anyway, the new logo (also made by Morena’s brother) is a pig. Not a great symbol of Spanishness. But “The Chorizo Chronicles” has a pork theme, and there certainly are a lot of pig-based products out here in Spain.
Some historians, in fact, suggest that the national obsession with pork comes all the way from the religious fervor of the Middle Ages: after Spain expelled the Muslims and the Jews in 1492, publicly consuming large amounts of pork was a sign of being a good Christian.
Much like companies today changing their logo to a rainbow during Pride Month, eating some ham or hanging a string of sausages in your kitchen told everyone around that you were keeping up with the current thing.
In any case, a pig might be fine for my podcast, but isn’t a great national symbol.
So, I thought, what are some other symbols of Spain?
The Spanish flag and its controversies
Officially, there are three symbols of Spain: the Spanish flag, the coat of arms and the national anthem.
And in many countries, these things would probably be uncontroversial.
Not in Spain, though.
Here in Barcelona, in fact, you’ll barely see the Spanish flag at all. The Catalan flag is hanging in a lot of places. Some people fly independence flags – called La Estelada, and inspired by Cuba and Puerto Rico (who declared independence from Spain in the late 19th century). But not the Spanish flag.
Why? Well, some associate it with Franco’s dictatorship, although the red and yellow stripes have been around since 1785. The Second Republic from 1931 to 1939 used a different flag, with a purple bar at the bottom – you’ll sometimes see that one flown at protests.
And the independence types would rather not have symbols of Spain around at all.
Town halls in some parts of Catalonia have signs next to the door proclaiming that they’re only flying the Spanish flag out of legal obligation – not because they want to. And apparently, most don’t even follow the law.
You can see the flag on National Police stations and some other government buildings. But it’s not common.
In other parts of Spain, the flag is less controversial. And the different Comunidades Autónomas have their own flags (as do provinces, cities, and towns) that you’ll see if you travel around.
Variations on the Spanish flag may include a black eagle (that’s the flag used during the dictatorship) or the silhouette of a bull – more on that later.
And that brings us to the national anthem, which (get this) has no words.
The Spanish National Anthem
Officially called La Marcha Real, the Spanish National Anthem is one of the world’s oldest.
According to Wikipedia, it was first mentioned in an army document in 1761, and since at least 1770 has been used at events to announce the presence of the king.
Throughout the years, there have been commonly-used lyrics, but none were made official. The only lyrics I know are actually the satirical ones: “Franco, Franco, tiene el culo blanco, porque su mujer lo lava con Ariel.”
I don’t know if your average Spanish person is aware of the old lyrics or not. Nostalgic right-wingers would probably break out the more specifically fascist Cara al Sol if they were singing at a get-together.
But back to the Marcha Real. Because in 2008 there was actually a contest to create lyrics for the anthem. I remember seeing some guy singing the winning words on the TV news.
The contest was held by the Olympic Committee, because back in the day, Madrid was hoping to host some Olympics or other. Also, because it’s a running joke that in international competitions, the Spanish athletes can’t sing along with their own national anthem.
They have to stand there silently while it plays, or hum it: “Bum bum, bum BAM bum, bum BAM BAM BAM BAM bum bum”, etc.
So the contest to write lyrics was won by some guy down in Ciudad Real, and announced on the news, but the whole thing was immediately scrapped – among other things, because the lyrics were in Spanish rather than representing the linguistic diversity of modern Spain.
(South Africa, it was pointed out, has an anthem sung in five languages.)
After that, we had the whole Great Recession, and the wordlessness of the national anthem moved to the political back burner as millions of people lost their jobs and the real estate market crashed.
So what about the coat of arms?
The Spanish Coat of Arms
The third official symbol of Spain is the coat of arms – which appears, among other places, left of center on the current Spanish flag.
Americans like myself don’t usually know much about coats of arms – or heraldry in general. Turns out there’s a lot to know. The Spanish coat of arms has changed many times through the years – the one with the black eagle I mentioned earlier was suppressed in 1981, but several of its elements remain in the current coat of arms.
(The black eagle, although associated with Franco by many people today, actually comes from as far back as the “Catholic Monarchs” Ferdinand and Isabella in the late 15th century. Spain’s got a lot of history.)
Anyway, the current “escudo” has the crown on top, representing the monarchy. The shield in the center of the whole thing has sections representing five ancient kingdoms: Castilla, León, Navarra, Aragón and Granada.
To the left and right of the shield are two pillars, representing the Pillars of Hercules down in the Strait of Gibraltar and a ribbon emblazoned with a slogan: PLUS ULTRA, meaning “further beyond”, which incidentally is the national motto.
And I know that if I don’t mention this bit, someone is going to write me an email about it: The two Pillars of Hercules with the ribbon draped between them are possibly the origin of the dollar sign we use in the US. (The original US dollar was based on a Spanish coin in circulation at the time of our independence.)
The Spanish monarchy
I talked about the monarchy a bit in my recent article on social class in Spain.
In reality, a lot of Spanish people are less than thrilled with the monarchy. But according to surveys, they also don’t think that getting rid of the King and creating a republic is particularly urgent.
In any case, the Spanish monarchy isn’t nearly as symbolic as the British one, for example. Queen Elizabeth II was practically synonymous with the UK – at least in my mind.
Over here in Spain, King Felipe VI is not quite as symbolic. I also doubt he’s particularly well-known abroad. Would your average European or American even recognize him if they saw him in the street?
There aren’t that many monarchies left in Europe, and I certainly wouldn’t recognize the King of Sweden.
But the King is officially the head of state, so he must be some sort of symbol of Spain. He also has his own coat of arms, which is similar to the national one, but instead of the Pillars of Hercules, has the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece around it.
I remember going to Teatro Español in Madrid years ago, and wondering why the curtain in front of the stage had a coat of arms with what looks like a dead sheep hanging from the bottom of it. Now I know: it’s because of the Order of the Golden Fleece, which is – dare I say it – a long story.
Furthermore, Felipe belongs to the house of Bourbon, which has its own coat of arms – three golden fleurs-de-lis on an azure shield. Those are dead center of the shield on the Spanish coat of arms. I’m just learning all this today, I doubt most people here in my barrio know much about heraldry and the symbols behind the monarchy and the flag.
Anyway, let’s move on…
Women in flamenco dresses
One of my students back in the day told me a story in which she was a young exchange student in Germany.
When introudcing herself as Spanish, she said, she’d get a lot of funny looks. “You don’t look Spanish!” was often the reply. “Where’s your flamenco dress?”
This was the long-gone decade of the 2000s, and international travel was less common in those days. So she had to explain all over Germany, she claimed, that Spain was a modern European country, where people owned microwaves, and listened to AC/DC, and where everyone dressed more or less normally.
(This was also before Zara was in every city in Europe. Spanish fashion is a bit more well-known these days.)
Anyway, nothing screams “Spain” like a woman in a flamenco dress: frilly on the bottom, and possibly red, with black polka dots. But let’s be clear: it’s not something Spanish women wear regularly.
They might wear flamenco dresses for certain festivals, though. So it’s not like you never see them.
Flamenco music, I should mention, is more regional than you might think. You can see flamenco shows here in Barcelona, but they’re organized for tourists. There’s not much of a local culture for that sort of thing.
If you want to see spontaneous flamenco, in its natural environment, you’re better off in Andalucía. And for flamenco dresses generally, go to a town fair in the south. Other regions have other typical outfits, which may be frilly, but which aren’t quite the same as a flamenco dress.
(The Germans my student complained about weren’t just making all this up: the government has been promoting flamenco as a tourist attraction and symbol of Spanish identity for decades.)
Paella as a symbol of Spain
Some people suggest paella as a symbol of Spain.
I remember certain people being giddy when the folks in charge of these things finally delivered a paella emoji to our phones – a giddiness that soon blossomed into controversy when it turned out that the paella didn’t have any of the traditional Valencian ingredients.
As I’ve written before, people in Spain take paella very seriously: when Jamie Oliver suggested putting some chorizo in his paella recipe several years ago, it started a whole international incident.
Historically, Spaniards weren’t experiencing the sort of abundance we take for granted these days. Most of the time, paella was rice with whatever you had around – chorizo, or chicken, or maybe even a neighborhood cat if times were hard.
But purists, these days, want to draw a thick line between paella and “arroz con cosas”, and also want to strictly define each variation.
In my highly controversial opinion, though, paella isn’t even that good. I eat it about once a year, when someone’s visiting as a tourist and wants to try it. There are much better examples of Spanish cuisine out there.
But I guess paella could be a symbol of Spain, as long as you’re careful to get the ingredients right.
Is bullfighting a symbol of Spain?
Bullfighting has long been a symbol of Spain, but like many others, it’s now controversial.
Many cultures throughout history have considered bovines to be sacred animals, and some historians consider bullfighting to be derived from the gladiatorial spectacles of Rome – or perhaps something even earlier.
For me, bullfighting is the struggle of man vs nature, and I love a good display of bravery. (It’s not exactly a fair fight, but sometimes, after all, the bull wins.)
Many modern urbanites, who have never killed and eaten an animal, or lifted a shovel out in the sun until their hands blistered, are happily unaware of man-vs-nature, and they find the whole thing to be barbaric.
And to be fair, it is. It’s bloody, and disturbing – but the ability to sit in an air-conditioned office and feel offended by all forms of violence is a luxury most members of our species just didn’t have.
Over the last couple of centuries, foreign writers such as Lord Byron, Ernest Hemingway and James A. Michener have been fascinated by bullfighting and what it says about Spain and Spanish people. And up until fairly recently, it was a very popular form of entertainment for all sorts of Spaniards: rich and poor, left and right.
Like most of these symbols, though, bullfighting is having a bad couple of decades. (It’s been banned completely up here in Catalonia.)
The Osborne Bull
The Osborne bull is a corporate logo that developed a sort of life of its own next to Spanish highways.
Grupo Osborne is a family-owned company making wine and brandy – I saw one of their big factories down in La Mancha on my bike tour earlier this year.
The bull logo is just a black silhouette you can see while driving around. There aren’t nearly as many of them as there used to be, but you can still see some – the Spanish parliament has even protected those remaining, declaring them to be a part of Spain’s cultural heritage.
(My favorite movie about Spain, Jamón Jamón, makes good use of the Osborne bull as part of the director’s general obsession with genitalia. Long story – better to just watch the movie.)
Osborne’s brandy isn’t as popular as it once was, but as I mentioned earlier, the bull silhouette has become so symbolic of Spain over the years that it’s even been put on (unofficial) flags which you sometimes see at protests, representing a sort of old-school conservatism.
Other symbols of Spain and Spanishness
There are a few other symbols of Spain I could talk about here.
Joan Miró made a famous logo for Spanish tourism back in the 80s, which is still in use. It’s a pretty weird logo, actually – gotta hand it to the Ministry of Tourism for using it for so long.
There are espadrilles – the shoes, made of esparto grass and canvas or leather – which are locally known as alpargatas. People wear them in summer.
And things like sunshine and olive oil could be considered symbols of Spain as well – although people might think of Italy for olive oil, and sunshine is available in many countries.
Final thoughts…
All this brings me back to a point people were talking about quite a bit when I was younger: that Spain just isn’t great at marketing itself.
The Spanish brand is a bit confusing – at least in part because many modern Spaniards want nothing to do with traditional Spanishness and its stereotypes.
Add to that the diversity of the country – the culture in Galicia is quite different than that of Andalucía, for example – and the fact that some regions want nothing to do with others, and you’ve got a country where it’s tough for everyone to get behind the same symbols.
And I can relate: as an American abroad, you would not believe how many times people come at me by saying “You know what the problem with American culture is? Hamburgers!”
I just roll my eyes. “Yeah, bro. Hamburgers.”
In my mind, I’m just a guy with a blog (and a podcast) – not some representative of Americana. I don’t choose my national symbols, and don’t want to spend a lot of energy defending them.
And, although I’ve been here for 20 years, I’m also not a great representative of Spanishness, I suppose.
I’ve even – on more than one occasion – made paella and put chorizo in it.
Symbolically yours,
Daniel AKA Mr Chorizo.
P.S. What do you think? Did I miss any symbols of Spanishness? Do you want to sing the pre-1936 lyrics to the Marcha Real for me? Let me know, right here, in the comments…
P.P.S. The Spain to Go podcast has around 90 episodes as of late 2024, and you can find it on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, and elsewhere. Just put Spain to Go into your favorite app and it’s probably there.
IIRC the remaining Osborne bulls belong to a non-profit that exists to preserve them. That's the story a Spanish colleague told me when I asked about the bulls along the highway. Apparently the EU banned alcohol ads along highways in 1980-something (or perhaps billboards in general, not sure now). Osborne started dismantling them. However Spaniards saw the bull as a national symbol and so ownership of the remaining two dozen or so was transferred to the non-profit and the Osborne name was painted over. At least that's what I was told.
As for paella, I've had it and it's never blown my socks off culinarily. It might be better with chorizo but then what isn't?