Stories of famous compositions: Baladas en Español (1996)

According to Per, the idea came from their own record company – Spain and especially Latin America (Argentina in particular) were among Roxette's largest markets ever, the band played there for some of the largest crowds in their careers, and the label's regional branches had long been asking for versions of the songs in Spanish. Marie and Pero refused at first, but eventually succumbed to their conviction. To make sure of the correct pronunciation, Rafael Gil helped them with the recording – they were only given one line of text at a time so that they could concentrate and record it as accurately as possible. The lyrics were adapted into Spanish by lyricist Luis Gómez-Escolar, about whom little is known to this day and whose translations have been criticized by critics and fans for years as oversimplified and sometimes even childish. Nevertheless, the album became a great commercial success – it reached gold or platinum in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Spain, and by 2001 it had sold over 1.2 million copies. An interesting fact at the very end: for this year's 40th anniversary of Roxette, Baladas en Español is released on vinyl for the first time.

Un Día Sin Ti – the rehearsal song that decided the whole project

Before embarking on the whole album, Per and Maria first wanted to find out if something like this could work at all. As a test recording, they chose the ballad "Spending My Time", which became "Un Día Sin Ti" ("A Day Without You"). The result convinced everyone so much that they immediately started choosing other songs from the catalog that would be suitable for the Spanish version.

The video was shot again by Jonas Åkerlund. A brand new video was also created for the flagship song of the whole project – again directed by Jonas Åkerlund, a Swedish director who had worked with Roxette since the days of "Fingertips '93" and had shot over ten clips for them by the end of their career. The fact that they were not satisfied with recycling an older video for this linguistic rarity, but ordered a completely new clip from their most trusted collaborator, shows well how seriously they took the whole Spanish project at the time.

No Sé Si Es Amor – the second number one in English also got a new clip

The second single from the album was the Spanish version of "It Must Have Been Love" under the title "No Sé Si Es Amor" ("I don't know if it's love"). Given that the original is Roxette's most successful song worldwide, it made sense to include it in the Spanish selection as one of the two official singles.

This song also earned its own, new clip by Åkerlund. Contrary to the habit of recycling old English clips with a new sound (as was the case with many later "greatest hits" versions), "No Sé Si Es Amor" also got a completely new video, again from the workshop of Jonas Åkerlund. Roxette thus approached both singles from Baladas en Español as carefully as they did the regular English releases – it was not an ordinary commercial by-product, but a full-fledged audiovisual project.

Tímida – the only song that Per Gessle sang himself in Spanish

There was one unwritten rule when choosing songs for the album: Per chose songs almost exclusively for Maria's singing. The only exception was the ballad "Vulnerable" from the album Crash! Boom! Bang!, which he sang himself in the Spanish version, although he did not speak Spanish at all.

A strange experience without words. Years later, Per himself described the whole recording as a strange but funny experience – he and Marie sang phrases whose exact meaning they did not know, relying purely on phonetic training with Rafael Gil. Still, according to him, the songs in Spanish sounded great, even without knowing exactly what they were talking about. Marie is said to have learned all the Spanish lyrics absolutely flawlessly, which Per still describes as an admirable feat – and his own solo foray into Spanish on "Vulnerable" remained a unique episode in the Roxette catalog.