At certain times and places, the absence of words is especially noticeable. There’s a supreme irony, for example, that for a country with such a passion for football, international fixtures will leave both team members and spectators either staring vacantly into space or mouthing indistinct murmurs whenever their national anthem is played. Take a look, the next time you watch the national team in action.

To add insult to injury, the music to a Spanish national anthem is one of the oldest in Europe. What was to become known as the Marcha Real (Royal March) first appeared in a book of military bugle calls dating from 1761, known as the Marcha Granadera. In 1770, King Carlos III declared it as the official “honour march”, and was played at events attended by the royal family. It was then soon known as the Marcha Real, or Royal March.

However, the origin of the melody is disputed. Several traditions claim that it originated in parts of Europe outside Spain (such as France and Germany), and indeed the music is not typical of Spanish music.

There was a contest held in 1870 to write a new national anthem for Spain, but no winner was declared and the Marcha Real – without lyrics – remained the country’s official anthem. Spain had to wait until the reign of King Alfonso XIII (1886 – 1931), when Eduardo Marquina wrote some words to accompany the music. Unsurprisingly, these reflected the prevailing nationalistic mood of the times and opened with the line “Glory, glory, crown of the Fatherland sovereign light which in your standard is gold”.

During the Spanish Civil War (1931 – 1939), however, the Marcha Real was replaced by words and music extolling the patriotism of a famous nineteenth century republican Rafael de Riego, and the Himno Riego became the Republican’s anthem.

That anthem was, of course, subsequently banned by General Franco at the beginning of his dictatorship, who restored the Marcha Real by decree in 1942. This time, the Royal March re-emerged with suitably Francoist lyrics (written by José MarÍa Pemán), which opened with the rousing lines: “Viva España, raise your arms sons of the resurgent Spanish people/Glory to the Fatherland that knew how to follow the blue of the sea and path of the sun”.

Four decades later, these lyrics mercifully died with Franco himself in 1975, although in 1997 Spain’s royal family issued a decree regulating the official use of the Marcha Real – a melody once again without lyrics.

This history is important, however, since the hijacking of the “national” anthem by extremist political factions of various persuasions highlights the difficulty of finding music, but especially words, that will be found acceptable by the different political allegiances in Spain, but more critically, by the disparate autonomous regions. Nationalists from Spain’s most restive regions, the Basque Country and Catalonia, for example, often view the Spanish flag and anthem as an imposition. Leftists also resent what they call the “appropriation” of national symbols by the Right.

Undaunted by inevitable opposition from Spain’s many brands of separtist, however, some conservative politicians are pressing for a compeition of one sort or another to encourage someone or a group of people to compose suitable words to accompany the Marcha Real. Amongst these is Gustavo Jaso, secretary of the right-wing Ermua Forum, which sees the wordless national anthem as a “deep-seated deficiency in our country” which the present socialist government has failed to address. It seems that the Ermua Forum took things into its own hands and commissioned a “panel of experts” to write the verses. Although these were to have been revealed to an eager Spanish public earlier this year, the deafening silence on the subject suggests that even like-minded experts might have failed to agree a suitable form of words.

Indeed, this was the fate of efforts that had apparently been made by Spain’s former Prime Minister, José María Aznar, who had asked a group of poets to write some lyrics for the anthem during his Government. In a seeming reanactment of the 1870 contest, the group failed to agree on an appropriate text. As one of the group himself said “the worst thing you can do is ask a group pf poets to agree on a verse”.

More recently still, therefore, the quest for words to the national anthem has been taken up by the leader of Spain’s opposition, Mariano Rajoy. He has asked parliament to set up a commission to write the long-lost lyrics, and reckons that the job should take no longer than two or three months.

So far – surprise, surprise – Snr Rajoy has been strangely quiet about any progress. The same old problem of trying to appease all sides, including separatist elements, ensures that the quest will continue to be an uphill battle. Furthermore, popular opinion also seems pretty well divided between those who are content to leave well alone and lyric-free and those who simply want some words to sing along to when the national anthem is played at sporting events.