I am sorry to belittle those people that said that the song has nothing to do with ETA, but you are so very very wrong.
This song was written during a period of the 1970s when ETA was planting bombs on the Spanish holiday resort areas, principally the Costa Brava (hence that reference). The DC-10 reference is part of this as well as it was the type of plane so commonly used by tour operators (that cant be a reference to the Civil War as of course the DC-10 did not exist in 1939). He is saying that like the many non-Spanish (including for example George Orwell, also referenced in the song) he (as a British tourist) is flying into the war zone.
In a nut-shell, the song is about passion. Passion for a lover (Joe Strummer had a Spanish lover at the time), and passion for your country, drawing parallels between the Spanish Civil War and the ETA struggle for basque separatism, with a dollop of Irish indepenence fighting via the 'back home and buses' reference which is a namecheck to the IRA campaign.
You have to appreciate that Joe Strummer had a certain fascination with all things Spanish (don't think he got the Spanish lyrics wrong, it is just the poor writing down of the lyric by others) and also the song was written during the 1970s a time of fear and unrest in the UK with the IRA bombing our towns and cities (don't get me started on that or the US funding of their terror campaign) and the ETA bombings in family holiday resorts.
I am sorry to belittle those people that said that the song has nothing to do with ETA, but you are so very very wrong.
This song was written during a period of the 1970s when ETA was planting bombs on the Spanish holiday resort areas, principally the Costa Brava (hence that reference). The DC-10 reference is part of this as well as it was the type of plane so commonly used by tour operators (that cant be a reference to the Civil War as of course the DC-10 did not exist in 1939). He is saying that like the many non-Spanish (including for example George Orwell, also referenced in the song) he (as a British tourist) is flying into the war zone.
In a nut-shell, the song is about passion. Passion for a lover (Joe Strummer had a Spanish lover at the time), and passion for your country, drawing parallels between the Spanish Civil War and the ETA struggle for basque separatism, with a dollop of Irish indepenence fighting via the 'back home and buses' reference which is a namecheck to the IRA campaign.
You have to appreciate that Joe Strummer had a certain fascination with all things Spanish (don't think he got the Spanish lyrics wrong, it is just the poor writing down of the lyric by others) and also the song was written during the 1970s a time of fear and unrest in the UK with the IRA bombing our towns and cities (don't get me started on that or the US funding of their terror campaign) and the ETA bombings in family holiday resorts.