Defining by elimination: Tengo argumento and the thousand Marías of Spanish

There are two ways to describe something. You can say what it is, or you can keep saying what it isn't until only one possibility is left. The second is slower, more playful and, done well, much more fun. Tengo argumento (I've got an argument) is built entirely that way.

On the song's own page I've already gone through the game of the Marías and made it clear I had no intention of revealing which is the real one. I still don't. The full lyrics are published and everyone can draw their own conclusions. Here I want to talk about the technique: how you define something by elimination, why the name María gives so much to play with in Spanish, the most absurd break-up in the catalogue and a TV line all of Spain recognises.

The riddle with no answer

Traditional riddles have a very clear structure. You're given clues, you think, and in the end there's an answer. Spanish children grow up with them, at school, at their grandparents' house, on long car journeys.

Tengo argumento plays with that structure but skips the ending. There are clues, there are eliminations, there's the rhythm of a children's riddle. But the answer never comes. The lyrics stay on the threshold, with a María who isn't any of the ones we know and who is never fully described either.

That turns the song into an open riddle. There's no official solution. There's an invitation for the listener to supply their own. And in a song, that's far more interesting than any answer.

Defining by what it isn't

In philosophy and theology there's an old tradition that tries to speak about the indescribable by saying only what it is not. It isn't this, it isn't that. It's a way of approaching something too vast or too slippery to put into words.

I'm not saying Tengo argumento is a theological treatise, of course. But it uses exactly that mechanism for far more earthly ends. It isn't this María, it isn't that other one. And through sheer elimination, the María who remains becomes enormous, mysterious, almost mythical.

The funny thing is that the method is applied to something that sounds very everyday. I like it, it's tasty, it tastes of María. These are after-dinner phrases, bar phrases, kitchen phrases. And on that simple base rises a whole ceremony of eliminations that turns a taste into a mystery.

The first María: the teatime one

The first one ruled out is María Fontaneda. Anyone who grew up in Spain knows what that means: the María biscuit, round, golden, with its patterned edge, the one you dunk in milk. Fontaneda is one of the best-known brands of those biscuits, founded in Aguilar de Campoo, in Palencia.

The María biscuit has a curious history. It was created in London in the nineteenth century, named after a Russian grand duchess called Maria who was marrying a British prince. And decades later it became, in Spain, the post-war biscuit, the biscuit of humble breakfasts, the one in every home. A product with an aristocrat's name that became the most popular of all.

Ruling out that María means ruling out childhood, teatime, sweetness and innocence. It's like saying: I'm not talking about anything you'd find in your grandmother's pantry.

The second María: the copla one

The second one ruled out is María de la O, and the lyrics immediately make clear they don't mean the artist. Here we enter different territory: that of copla, the songs that have accompanied whole generations in this country.

María de la O is the title of a classic copla, one of those that belong to the repertoire everyone has heard at some point, even without knowing where it comes from. The name brings a whole universe with it: drama, heartbreak, ruffled dresses, stories of love and of money that can't buy happiness.

Ruling out that María means ruling out the folk tradition, the stage, the show. And it's an elimination that amuses me in a catalogue like mine, so full of nods to copla and folklore. In Lola Flores, for instance, tradition is looked at head-on. Here it's named in order to be set aside.

The third María: the religious one

The third elimination is the most loaded of all. It isn't «María la religiosa», the lyrics say. And in a country with centuries of Catholic tradition, the religious María is the greatest of them all. The María of processions, holy cards, churches and half of Spain's compound names.

That elimination has a mischievous touch. Going from the Virgin to «María la poderosa», María the mighty, in two lines is a leap only a song that doesn't take itself too seriously can allow itself. And at the same time the word mighty has something devotional about it, as if the María of the song deserved an altar of her own.

I like that the lyrics don't mock religion. They simply set it aside. It isn't that María, full stop. There's room for all of them, but this song isn't about that one.

The name of half of Spain

The game of the Marías works so well because in Spanish that name is everywhere. For generations it has been one of the most common names in Spain, alone or in compounds: María José, María del Carmen, María Jesús, María Dolores. Almost everyone has a María in the family.

The name has also slipped into the language in a thousand ways. There are María biscuits, the «baño María» or bain-marie, Marías in songs, in proverbs, in age-old expressions. It's such a common word that it will take any meaning you care to give it.

That abundance is what makes the riddle possible. If the song were called something else, the game wouldn't work. With María, every listener has ten different meanings in their head before the first chorus is over. And the lyrics play precisely with that saturation.

The mighty, the lavish, the important

When the lyrics finally reach the María who is the one, they don't describe her with facts. They describe her with adjectives. Mighty, lavish, important. These are diva words, the kind used for a great star or a queen of the night.

That choice is very Planeta Gayfolk. In queer culture, divas hold a special place. They're figures of excess, of presence, of never apologising for taking up space. And describing the mysterious María with that vocabulary turns her into a kind of private diva, a presence that fills the protagonist's life.

The lovely thing is that, after all the eliminating, the final portrait still doesn't say what she is. We know what she's like, how much she matters and how much she's liked. But we don't know what she is. And that's how it stays.

A wedding that falls through

And then the song tells a story, the only one it has. The protagonist was going to marry his boyfriend of twenty years. But the boyfriend didn't want a threesome with María. So the protagonist says «le mandé a freír espárragos», I sent him off to fry asparagus.

It's one of the most absurd break-ups in the catalogue, and at the same time one of the most logical. Twenty years of relationship ended over a question of priorities. The boyfriend sets a condition, the protagonist won't accept it, and that's that. No drama, no tears, just a good old-fashioned Spanish expression.

The detail of the wedding amuses me too. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Spain since 2005, and many couples who had been together for years went to the registry office. The song imagines one of those couples, with two decades behind them, who stop at the altar's door. Not because of a scandal or a betrayal, but because of María.

Sent off to fry asparagus

The expression the lyrics use deserves a section of its own. «Mandar a alguien a freír espárragos», sending someone off to fry asparagus, is one of the most traditionally Spanish ways of getting rid of a person, roughly «go take a hike». It's milder than other far ruder options, and it has a touch of humour that takes the edge off.

Using it to end a twenty-year relationship is a comic masterstroke. What in another song would be a heart-rending farewell is dispatched here with a grandmother's phrase. And that lightness says a lot about the protagonist: he isn't devastated, he's calm, because he has chosen.

The lyrics finish off with another phrase in the same vein: «así nos ahorramos desengaños», that way we spare ourselves disappointments. It's almost practical reasoning. Better to break up now than marry and find out later that you didn't want the same things. There's a very homespun wisdom in that conclusion.

«Rica, rica y con fundamento»

The song's title comes from a nod everyone in Spain gets. «Rica, rica y con fundamento», tasty, tasty and with substance, is the line with which Karlos Arguiñano, the TV chef, has been rounding off his recipes for decades. It's one of those phrases that have left the screen and settled into the language.

The lyrics take it and flip it with a play on sounds: «con fundamento, tengo argumento», with substance, I've got an argument. And so the protagonist turns his taste into a thesis. It isn't a whim; it's an argument. He has reasons, and the reasons are María.

I love that use of television as a popular dictionary. Many of my lyrics take phrases from TV, from films or from the street and put them to work in another context. I wrote about that taste for exaggerating and twisting everyday speech in this essay on exaggeration in my lyrics.

A structure that goes round and round

Tengo argumento is a circular song. The chorus of the Marías comes back again and again, almost unchanged, and the story of the wedding appears several times, a little longer each time. It's a structure that looks a lot like an obsession.

When you really like something, you keep coming back to it. You name it, describe it, compare it with other things. And the lyrics do exactly that with María: name her, rule out the others, praise her, start again.

That repetition also has something of a children's game, of a playground rhyme. I like it, it's tasty, it tastes of María. Short, easy phrases that stick like a tongue-twister. And that makes the song more fun the more you hear it.

Respecting the mystery

Some songs explain everything and some songs keep something back. Tengo argumento belongs to the second group, and I think it's better that way.

A riddle explained loses its charm. If the lyrics said clearly what María is, the song would be a one-use joke. By not saying it, every listener plays their own game. Some think one thing, some think another and some are left wondering. And all the readings coexist.

That's why I'm not going to solve it here. What I can say is that the song, deep down, talks about something very serious with a lot of humour: the freedom to choose what makes you happy even if it doesn't fit the plan others had for you.

I like it, it's tasty

Before any elimination, the song starts with three minimal phrases: «me gusta», «está rica», «sabe a María». I like it, it's tasty, it tastes of María. They're food phrases. Anyone says them in front of a plate, on a terrace or in their mother's kitchen.

In Spanish, the vocabulary of food and the vocabulary of desire cross all the time. We say someone «está rico», is tasty, that they're good enough to eat, that they're a «bombón», a chocolate. We call people «cariño», «cielo», «pichón», darling, sweetheart, little pigeon, and also «mi vida» and «mi rey». The language mixes hunger and desire quite naturally.

Tengo argumento sets up camp right at that crossroads. It starts with a flavour and ends with a lover. And in between it passes through a biscuit, which is food, and a copla, which is feeling. The lyrics go from the palate to the heart without changing tone, as if the two were the same thing. And in a way they are: both are about what you like and what you're not prepared to give up.

The humour of the eliminations

Each elimination in the song works as a little joke. And what those jokes have in common is that they all play with shared culture. For the gag to work, you need to know what a María biscuit is, what a copla is and what María means in a procession.

That kind of humour is very much ours. It relies on complicity. Whoever hears the song gets the references because they grew up with them, and that instant understanding brings a smile. Nothing needs explaining. Naming is enough.

And at the same time, the humour of the eliminations is a kind humour. It laughs at nobody. It doesn't ridicule the biscuit, or the copla, or faith. It simply uses them as markers on the map, as reference points that help locate the María who really matters.

Choosing against the plan

Underneath all the play, the song tells of a decision. The protagonist had a plan: to marry his lifelong boyfriend, after twenty years. It's the plan many people expect, the one families celebrate, the one considered the crowning moment of a relationship.

And he gives it up. Not because of a tragedy, but because that plan came with a condition he wasn't willing to accept. He'd rather keep what makes him happy than live up to what was expected of him.

That choice has something very queer about it, in the broadest sense of the word. For a long time, LGBTQ+ people lived outside the established plan, because the plan didn't include them. When the doors of marriage finally opened to us, many of us celebrated. But that doesn't mean marriage has to be compulsory. The song argues, with humour, that you can say no too.

Twenty years is nothing

Twenty years together is a long time. It's half a youth, a shared life, flats, holidays, families, mutual friends. And the song wipes them out in a single line.

That disproportion is part of the comedy. You'd expect a break-up after two decades to be a drama in several acts, with arguments, lawyers and tears. Not here. Here it's settled with an old Spanish phrase and some practical reasoning.

But there's also something serious in that speed. Sometimes long relationships break over things that look small from outside and are actually enormous. A condition, an incompatibility, a difference in priorities that was always there and only becomes visible when something has to be signed. The wedding, in the song, works as that moment of truth.

A María who doesn't exist

It's worth saying clearly: like every name that appears in my lyrics, the María of this song isn't any real person. Neither the lover, nor the twenty-year boyfriend, nor the wedding that never takes place have anything to do with anyone in particular. They're invented characters serving a riddle.

And that's exactly what makes the game possible. If María were someone with a first name and surname, the song would be gossip. Because she isn't, it becomes a mirror. Every listener looks in and sees their own María: a love, a vice, a passion, a habit, a person, an idea. Something they like so much they'd be ready to send anyone off to fry asparagus who asked them to give it up.

That, I think, is the question the song leaves hanging for anyone listening closely. What would you never give up for anything? What's your argument? You don't need to answer it out loud. It's enough to think about it for a moment while the chorus comes round again.

Wordplay in the catalogue

Tengo argumento isn't alone in playing with language. In Gofio de calcetín (Sock gofio) words combine in impossible ways, and in Ni un pimiento (Not a single pepper) a stock expression becomes a whole story. These are songs that have fun with Spanish, with its proverbs, its double meanings and its age-old phrases.

And it's part of Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado Gayfolk (A new planet called Gayfolk discovered), an album where humour and heartbreak often go hand in hand.

What unites all these songs is the trust that the listener knows the language as well as the writer does. Proverbs, set phrases and familiar names are a shared treasure, and playing with them is a way of celebrating that common inheritance. When a lyric twists an expression we all know, the smile comes on its own, because the listener has done half the work.

Who this song is for

For anyone who has ever had to choose between what they wanted and what was expected of them. For anyone who has sent someone off to fry asparagus and not regretted it. For anyone who has their own María, whatever she may be.

And for anyone who enjoys riddles with no answer, songs that leave something in the air and wordplay that's best understood with a smile.

How to listen

The song is on the singles page and on every platform, and you can download it from the downloads section. Listen to it unhurriedly, with something tasty nearby, and let everyone think of their own María.

As a lyricist, composer and music producer, I really enjoy writing songs that play with language and with what goes unsaid. The music and the vocal performances are generated with artificial intelligence, but double meanings, old Spanish sayings and the wish to choose for yourself are about as human as anything I know.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tengo argumento about? It's a song built like a riddle. The protagonist says something tastes good and tastes of María, and rules out well-known Marías (the biscuit, the copla, the religious one) until he's left with «María mi amante», María my lover. He also tells how he broke up with his boyfriend of twenty years because the boyfriend didn't want to share her.

Who is María in the song? The lyrics don't say, and that's part of the game. They only say what she isn't and describe her as mighty, lavish and important. Every listener can make their own interpretation.

Where does the title come from? It's a play on the phrase «rica, rica y con fundamento», made famous in Spain by the TV chef Karlos Arguiñano. The lyrics turn it into «con fundamento, tengo argumento», with substance, I've got an argument.

Who makes this song? Mike Sain't Louis, a lyricist, composer and music producer who presents himself as "the first AI songwriter": he writes the lyrics and directs the production, and the music and vocal performances are generated with artificial intelligence.