Libre (song)

"Libre" ("Free") is a song by José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero, first performed and made popular by Spanish pop star Nino Bravo on his 1972 album of the same name. The song's lyrics tell of a young man who is "tired of dreaming" and yearns to fly "free like a bird that escaped its prison." Though he's not mentioned in it by name, the song was reportedly inspired by the death of Peter Fechter while trying to cross the Berlin Wall in 1962.

A hit in Spain, the song also became popular in much of Spanish-speaking Latin America, where it took on political overtones. Banned in Cuba, in Chile it was adopted as an unofficial anti-communist anthem and became popular among supporters of the military junta. In her study Sounds of Memory: Music and Political Captivity in Pinochet’s Chile (1973-1990) music historian Katia Chornik of the University of Manchester claims the song was played during interrogations of prisoners at the time of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.