Quien Miente y Jura: the proverb that becomes a goodbye

It sounds like a grandmother's proverb, and it almost is. Quien Miente y Jura (Whoever Lies and Swears) starts from a saying with the air of popular wisdom: whoever swears falsely to save their love is actually condemning it. Deceit, in the end, is the worst traitor.

I like that it starts like that, with a general truth, and then comes down to the specific. Because after the chorus, the lyrics become intimate and direct.

The central phrase is one of the most painful to say out loud: I know you're not in love. You're fond of me, yes, but you're not in love. That difference between fondness and love is one of the hardest things to accept in a relationship, and the song names it without beating around the bush. Nobody needs to confess it. It shows in the things they do. In feeling insignificant.

Flaws and the end

What I like most is the honesty of the last verse. There's no portrait of a perfect victim facing a villain. There's an acknowledgement: of course I have my flaws, of course I'm not perfect. But that changes nothing. This is the end, because what's needed is someone who knows how to value you.

And the close returns to the title with a detail straight out of a Spanish kitchen row: you never trust again someone who lies and swears «por sus padres» ("on their parents' lives"). Swearing on your parents is the ultimate, the sacred. Doing it falsely is crossing a line there's no coming back from.

The drawn-out «llorando» ("crying") of the chorus, stretched until it runs out of air, gives it a melancholy copla feel that I think is perfect for the story. It's sad, but not defeated.

For listening to after that conversation in which someone has sworn you something you no longer believe. And for dedicating, if you dare, to whoever did it. They might not get it the first time, but the chorus has a habit of going round and round in your head.

The full lyrics are further down. Listen on Spotify