Composer Leo Caerts, writer of the Belgian pasodoble on which ‘Y viva España’, by Manolo Escobar, dies at 94 | Culture | EUROtoday

Leo Caerts, Belgian composer, has died on the age of 94, his musical instrument retailer in Leuven introduced this Monday. The musician is the writer of the track And stay Spainfrom 1971, of which they made varied variations, which impressed Manolo Escobar to jot down And lengthy stay Spain and which earned Caerts the title of honorary citizen of town of Madrid.

“RIP Leonardus Caerts 1931-2025. Father, grandfather, musician, composer, founder of the music store, businessman, honorary citizen of Madrid,” they wrote on the shop’s web site to announce his demise.

The well-known track about Spain, with references to God and bullfighting, additionally covers the geography of the peninsula. It is a pasodoble that was commissioned for Samantha, a Belgian singer who died in 2023. The lyrics, which have been initially in Dutch, have been written by Leo Rozenstraten, a frequent co-worker of Caerts. The piece’s rise to fame was with Sylvia Vrethammar, a Swedish singer, who took the track to the best-seller record within the United Kingdom in 1974, the place it spent 39 consecutive weeks and offered practically one million copies.

In the unique textual content it was heard: “with my hands I play the castanets/ and with my foot I mark the flamenco step/ I only wear Andalusian dresses/ and on my head I wear a big black hat.”

In 2020, Caerts informed EFE that initially the textual content spoke “about vacations, the sun and the sea”, a couple of Spain that was starting to change into one of many favourite vacationer locations for northern Europeans.

Diego A. Manrique mentioned: “The singer Hanna Aroni, with an Israeli passport and an internationalist vocation, needed to file it, not solely in English: ‘I additionally need to do it in Spanish; I suppose the unique is in Spanish, proper?’. Well no,misshowever higher to not confess it. They rapidly went to the Spanish Embassy in Brussels, the place they have been related with Manuel de Gómez, an worker who was keen on versification. And very patriotic: “Among flowers, fandanguillos and joy/ my Spain was born, the land of love/ Only God could create such beauty/ and it is impossible that there could be two/ and everyone knows it is true/ and they cry when they have to leave.” Manolo Escobar recorded it like this in 1973. And he resisted these verses as a result of he thought-about them apparent. The opinion of his file label, Belter, prevailed. They bought it proper: And lengthy stay Spain It is a part of the nationwide heritage.