A song you'll love to hate
Cara al sol con la camisa nueva
que tú bordaste en rojo ayer,
me hallará la muerte si me lleva
y no te vuelvo a ver.
Formaré junto a mis compañeros
que hacen guardia sobre los luceros,
impasible el ademán,
y están presentes en nuestro afán.
Si te dicen que caí,
me fui al puesto que tengo allí.
Volverán banderas victoriosas
al paso alegre de la paz
y traerán prendidas cinco rosas:
las flechas de mi haz.
Volverá a reír la primavera,
que por cielo, tierra y mar se espera.
Arriba escuadras a vencer
que en España empieza a amanecer.
España una
España grande
España libre
Arriba España
(Submitted to the Quest E2 Quests: Songs and Lyrics)
A song from the dustbin of History
Cara al Sol belongs to the broad “music-of-the-evil-hearted” category, as it was the hymn of the Spanish fascist movement, the Falangistas. The lyrics is written by one of the founders of the Falangista movement (Falange Española), the law student José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The Cara al Sol music is composed by Juan de Tellería.
A lyrical marquise
José Antonio Primo de Rivera was born in 1903, with the hereditary right to claim the
noble title
Marqués de Estrella. He got involved in the
politics of the Spanish
extreme right early on. Already in
1930, at the age of 27, Primo de Rivera was appointed General Secretary of the
royalist movement
Unión Monárquica.
The Falange Española was officially founded in 1933. Soon after the movement was founded, the Falangistas felt the desperate need for a rousing song, faced as they were with musically well-versed anarchist opponents (with the anarchist FAI/CNT fighting song A las Barricadas). After some committee-work the lyrics and music of Cara al Sol were adopted as the official “Himno de Falange Española” and its premiere performance was given on February 2, 1936 at the Cine Europa in Madrid.
For José Antonio de Rivera things might have looked reasonably promising in February 1936, but they were certainly not going to stay that way. Already on November 17 he became arrested during a military revolt and he was shot dead on November 20.
Many streets with annoyingly long names
During Franco’s fascist regime in Spain José Antonio Primo de Rivera got the status of fascist martyr and almost every Spanish city was obliged to name a reasonably large street after him. Cara al Sol, being the song of the only legal Party, was during this period of fascist dictatorship used as a kind of unofficial national anthem.
Reference:
http://www.himnonacional.org/caraalsol.html
http://ingeb.org/songs/caraalso.html