Macarena
Los del Río
Most of the nouns here are things you would learn in your first month of Spanish, which makes this a rare object: a genuinely famous song a true beginner can hold all of. The value is in two grammar points that courses spend weeks on. First, gustar. te gustan and le gustaría do not behave like the English like — the thing being liked is the subject, so the verb agrees with it and the person becomes an indirect object. Meet it here, in two short examples, rather than in a table. Second, the pronoun se in se llama and se compra, doing two completely different jobs a few seconds apart. Everything else is easy. Treat this as the card you use to check whether the basics have actually stuck.
How to study this song
The card for “Macarena” is built from 30 study entries at A1+: 15 Spanish words, 4 adjectives and 11 verb forms. Begin with alegría, amigos and apellido: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. This one leans on its verbs: 11 distinct forms against 4 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| ES | EN | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| alegría | joy | gioia | joie | alegria | vreugde | Freude |
| amigos | friends | amici | amis | amigos | vrienden | Freunde |
| apellido | surname | cognome | nom de famille | sobrenome | achternaam | Nachname |
| bandera | flag | bandiera | drapeau | bandeira |
What this song teaches you
Level · A1+
- Vocabulary words
- 15
- Adjectives
- 4
- Word combos
- 11
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 11
- Quiz questions
- 35
More Spanish songs at this level
Background
About the song
“Macarena” is the irresistibly catchy dance song by the Spanish duo Los del Río, first recorded in 1993.
Rooted in Andalusian rumba and hand-clapping flamenco pop, it turned a simple, playful lyric about a woman named Macarena into the basis for one of the most famous group dances ever, with its own fixed set of arm movements that anyone could learn in seconds.
Antonio Romero and Rafael Ruiz wrote the original in 1993 after seeing a flamenco dancer at a party in Venezuela; the Bayside Boys remix was the work of Mike Triay and Carlos de Yarza in Miami, with the extra vocals sung by Patty Alfaro.
Did you know?
A remix by the Bayside Boys, which added English lyrics, turned the song into a worldwide phenomenon: it spent fourteen weeks at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1996 and stayed on the chart for around sixty weeks, at the time one of the longest runs in its history.
The dance became a fixture at weddings, sports events and parties everywhere.
Charts & streaming
“Macarena” sold in the many millions worldwide and is regularly ranked among the biggest one-off dance hits of all time. Decades later its instantly recognisable routine still fills dancefloors, keeping the song a permanent part of global party culture.
Billboard later placed it seventh in its all-time Hot 100 ranking and first among all-time Latin songs, and sales across every version are estimated at more than fourteen million copies.