No puedo desenchufar este ventilador que está esparciendo mierda

The last day. He comes home and, instead of facing up to things, he shuts himself in the other room with a guilty face, like an ostrich burying its head. Heaven forbid someone should ask him for explanations while looking him in the eye. The song calls him a coward in the first line, and after that image it's hard to disagree.

The lyrics work almost like a monologue. The narrator knows everything, even the locations, and he knows it. That's why he keeps quiet. He keeps quiet so the shit doesn't reach all his people, so those around him don't find out what's happened. But the fan is already on. (The title means "I Can't Unplug This Fan That's Spreading Shit", the Spanish version of the shit hitting the fan.)

The usual strategy

The most painful part is the one that anticipates what's to come, because the script is known by heart: if he has to lie once more, he will. And if to cover up what he's done he has to make the other person out to be unhinged, crazy, he'll do it without thinking, and he'll get everyone on his side. It's a dynamic many people will recognise, that of someone who, when caught, instead of owning up turns the other person into the problem.

Even so, amid so much anger, there's room for humour. The answers he gave when the truth came out were so clumsy they seemed dictated by a preschooler. I love that comparison, because it reduces the manipulator to what he is: someone who can't even lie well.

What follows is the title, repeated twelve times, with the last word stretched to infinity. And it makes complete sense. A fan doesn't stop because you want it to: as long as it's plugged in, it keeps spinning and spreading whatever you throw at it. The repetition imitates that feeling, of a truth that can no longer be contained and that splatters everyone however hard someone tries to unplug it.

There's something very liberating in that insistence. After so much imposed silence, the song shouts the same thing again and again, like someone finally throwing the window wide open.

For anyone who has been branded crazy for telling the truth. For listening to at full volume, and letting the fan keep spinning.

The full lyrics are further down. Listen on Spotify