La Perla
Rosalía & Yahritza y su Esencia
How to study this song
The card for “La Perla” is built from 90 study entries at C2-: 47 Spanish words, 13 adjectives and 30 verb forms. The glossary is the place to begin — perla, hola and ladrón are the song’s keywords. This one leans on its verbs: 30 distinct forms against 13 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the words on their own are not the problem — it is the way they are put together that takes the work.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| perla | pearl | perla | perle | pérola | parel | Perle |
| hola | hello | ciao | bonjour | olá | hallo | Hallo |
| ladrón | thief | ladro | voleur | ladrão | dief | Dieb |
| paz | peace | pace | paix | paz |
What this song teaches you
Level · C2-
- Vocabulary words
- 47
- Adjectives
- 13
- Word combos
- 10
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 30
- Quiz questions
- 35
More Spanish songs at this level
Background
About the song
Seventh track on LUX, released on 7 November 2025, «La Perla» is a bachata that works as a character study. Over three minutes Rosalía and the Washington trio Yahritza y su Esencia list the failings of a man the chorus keeps calling a pearl — a gem — while every line around it says the opposite: a charming liar who spends money he has not got, who blames his mistakes on a body double, and who vanishes the moment anyone needs him. The press read it as a portrait of her former fiancé; the singer answered that nobody needs names pointed out for the message to land.
Did you know?
The title works on two levels at once. «La Perla» is a famous seaside neighbourhood in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, and it is also the Spanish way of saying someone is a piece of work: call a person a pearl and everyone understands you mean the opposite. The lyric leans on the second reading and never explains the joke.
Charts & streaming
Released 7 November 2025 on Columbia Records as part of LUX. Written by Rosalía Vila Tobella, Noah Goldstein, Dylan Wiggins, David Rodríguez and Ryan Tedder, and produced by Rosalía, Goldstein and Wiggins. It reached number one in Spain and Argentina, number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 3 on Hot Latin Songs, and entered Spotify’s global chart at number five.