María Peláe delivers a raw tale of suffering and repression in her Benidorm Fest entry “Remitente”

“I’m not leaving anything unsaid”. That’s María Peláe speaking when the Benidorm Fest artists were announced in Sevilla in November. And oh, did she mean that. Get ready for a raw and meaningful trip to the depths of Spanish recent memory. Here’s the story of suffering and repression behind “Remitente”.

Scroll down for the “Remitente” lyrics

Benidorm Fest 2024: María Peláe – “Remitente”

33-year-old María Pelae from Málaga is one of Spain’s most cherished artists. Mixing flamenco with contemporary accents, she’s been around for almost ten years now. She recently released her fourth album Al Baño María. She counts over 300,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

María is no stranger to television and Eurovision: she was one of the songwriters behind “Arde” — Aitana’s entry in the OT Gala Eurovisión 2018. As a performer, María finished third in Your Face Sounds Familiar, where she embodied Barbara Pravi and Pastora Soler.

An outspoken LGTBI icon, María is known for her lyrics, which have always depicted love and affection between two women. While that is, luckily, more common in 2023, it wasn’t always the case when she started her career. In fact, one of her best known songs is “La niña”, in which she interprets a mother who discovers her daughter is lesbian and ends up joining her in a lesbian bar.

What do the “Remitente” lyrics mean?

Girl, get ready. “Remitente” has the most complex lyrics out of any Benidorm Fest entry we’ve had so far, and one of the most difficult to translate in the history of Spanish Eurovision entries. If you studied Spanish, this text would be something you could get in a C2 level exam. In fact, these lyrics are hard to fully decipher even for native speakers, and you’ll get more references with each listen.

Before jumping into the lyrics, you need to understand the song is filled with localisms, metaphors, idioms and also, sentences that come directly from María’s older relatives. There are lots of references (there’s a section about them below) to different events from the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s Dictatorship.

Step by step: the general sense of the song is to become a reminder of what happened just last century. María Peláe has explained in several interviews how she’s been negatively impressed by some expressions and attitudes seen in today’s society that remind her of the years that led to the aforementioned events. And thus, her song is a call out to those who, with or without being conscious, reproduce those ideas. 

In an interview with Europa Press, she said:

“Let’s stop provoking certain situations, because those who lived their consequences remember it, and not in a particularly beautiful way”.

Unlike in other places across Europe, memory about the tragic events of the past century is still not fully commemorated in Spain. Denial of the Civil War and, particularly, the Dictatorship’s atrocities is widespread. There are efforts to reverse this situation coming from many artists, collectives, and some political parties; but for example, there’s no such thing as a commemoration day for those who lost their lives during the war.

“Remitente”: The many references explained

In a call to not forget what happened (mostly) in the 30s and 40s, where Spain went from having one of the most progressive Republics in Europe to a Civil War, a famine, and a terrible dictatorship, María Peláe has used the voices of those who still remember it: her grandparents.

The song refers to the tiny hopes of freedom during the war, and how they were taken away once it ended and the Francoist repression became widespread. “Ay, que sobró valor” (‘Oh, there was too much courage’) is a representation of that aftermath, the struggle when the republicans were defeated and persecuted. Many families would suffer isolation and backlash in their villages or neighbourhoods for having just one relative that took part in the resistance.

When the backing vocalists say “ración de leche, ración de pena” (‘a ration of milk, a ration of sorrow’), they are referencing the famine that gripped Spain during the first years of Francoism. The same goes for the line “colas del pan” (‘queues for bread’).

In fact, if you see that some of the sentences do not make much sense with the next line, it’s because they are coming directly from her older relatives mouthes.

In the same interview we mentioned before, Peláe explained one of her grandfathers went to prison because he was a communist and the Francoist authorities shaved his sister’s hair so that everybody knew it. So “coge el juguete con la diestra, no rechistes y que tu padre no se entere” (‘take the toy with your right hand, don’t mumble so that your father won’t notice’) may be a phrase from her grandmother to one of her children back in the day.

Her other grandfather lived through “La Desbandá”, which María recalls with the line “las desbandás que nunca vuelven” (‘The stampedes that never come back’). This was a terrible massacre that happened in 1937 in the road between Málaga and Almería, about which there was barely any information until recently.

Francoist aviation forces started bombing the people who were running from the recently taken area from Málaga to Almería, from where boats were departing for abroad. Sources claim there were between 3,000 and 5,000 dead people. The “desespero entre los trenes” (‘despair between the trains’) also references the flee of Spanish Republicans to Europe by train. 

She references a very well known episode from the Civil War: the murdering of Las 13 Rosas (the 13 Roses). They were a group of 13 women aged 18 to 27 who were socialist militants and were shot by Franco’s dictatorship months after the war ended. Their story was told in the 2007 film Las Trece Rosas, which was preselected for Spain’s Oscars submission that year, and had a remarkable box office success.

There are several other ways to refer to the darkness that Spain was submerged into during the dictatorship. You’ll see references to the “chains”, both from the prisoneers and as a metaphor; the allegory of the cave, the voices that run out. The “chains” are a common reference in Spanish history: ‘¡Vivan las caenas!’ (‘Long live to the chains’) was a cry attributed to those who celebrated the reinstatement of absolutism by King Fernando VII in 1823, ending a period of relative openness that started just three years before.  

And of course, “freedom”, the name of the sender of the letter. Freedom, which was a word that led most of the opposition to Franco’s regime until the end. The word inspired multiple artworks, poems and protest songs. It is now also a female name in Spanish, ‘Libertad’, so María uses it with a double sense here. 

“Let’s see if you’re such a tough guy, let’s see if you’re so great”, the final cries of the song are an appeal to those who irresponsably use, reference, deny or make fun of these events.

“Remitente” has two versions, we’ve translated the Benidorm Fest one. The one released on María’s album, Al Baño María, is longer (4:30) and contains further references to the era: “El brazo alzado de tus abuelas” (‘the raised arm of your grandmothers’), which most likely refers to the clenched fist, a common gesture among the Spanish resistance and many other resistance movements around the globe, but also to the Nazi salute, which was also compulsory in Spain during the years of the Civil War and the first years of the Second World War, and which Franco eliminated once it was apparent that Hitler would be defeated.

“Remitente” lyrics – María Peláe (Benidorm Fest 2024)

What are your thoughts on María Peláe’s Benidorm Fest entry. What meaning do you draw from the “Remitente” lyrics? Share in the comments below.