It’s never had official lyrics. The Francoist unofficial words were dropped in 1978. Nothing to do with ‘refusal to sing’. A previous royalist lyric also abandoned decades ago. The music dates from the 1700’s. So you were right first time Trammers, and I thought you were making a witty joke. For future pub quiz preparation the anthems of San Marino, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo also don’t have any words.
Just looked this up. It’s seriously odd. A kind of inner monologue of the first William of Orange, who was German, a faithful retainer and favourite of the Spanish Habsburg Kings, and then led the rebellion against them which founded the Netherlands as an independent state. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Silent Good spot.
I'd rather they saved their breath for the match itself. I mean singing the British national anthem doesn't say anything about whether someone loves their country but only whether they are a royalist or not, So maybe the question should be whether we should change the anthem. The Spanish save their breath for the match, which works - it's fortunate they don't have words to their anthem otherwise Catalan players could have problems with it. The Belgian players sing in different languages to each other.
Actually @UTRs thats not the worst thing they did although they did lose it about 3 minutes in they do like a long intro
