What grammatical structure is highlighted -and spectacularly belted out-in the refrain of Juanes’ song “A Dios Le Pido?”

Question

What grammatical structure is highlighted -and spectacularly belted out-in the refrain of Juanes’ song “A Dios Le Pido?”

Answer 1

I agree with Cristian that it's mainly the subjunctive mood being highlighted in this song. However, I'd say that it's not only uncertainty/doubt about whether these things will happen that gives the need for the subjunctive, but rather the desire, wish, or will (voluntad) for them to occur that truly necessitates the subjunctive.

For example:

Que si me muero, sea de amor = If I die, let it be of love - in other words, I wish/desire/will that love be the cause of my death. In fact, this use of the word "be" is actually the subjunctive in English! So you can see that we do have the subjunctive in English, but it's harder to detect since we don't have a distinct conjugation for it the way Spanish does. This is why many native English speakers struggle to understand the subjunctive mood when learning Spanish. We don't realize that we also have the subjunctive in our own language, because our English grammar structure is much simpler and less defined than Spanish is.

I hope this also helps.

Answer 2

Make sure this is the correct part:

Que si me muero sea de amor

Y si me enamoro sea de vos

Y que de tu voz sea este corazón

Todos los días a Dios le pido

Source: https://genius.com/Juanes-a-dios-le-pido-lyrics

There's a lot of "ifs" to this stanza, and it makes sense to have this element of uncertainty in poems and songs centered around love, prayer, the future, etc. There is uncertainty, and where there's uncertainty, Spanish speakers use the subjunctive mood. If you want a more literal take on the lyrics, consider my rough translation here:

"If I die, may it be from love

And if I fall in love, may it be from you

And that of your voice may it be that heart.

Every day I ask God..."

Half of the lines here have an "if, may it be" structure. It's quite close to the "if, then" strucutre in grammar that we call a conditional statement. If this, then that. If I die, then may it be from love. In a conditional statement in language or in a logic class, we don't actually know if the "if" part actually happens. We just know what will happen if the "if" actually happens. Because of that uncertainty, we use the subjunctive mood. The mood also explains why "si" and "sea" pop up a lot. Si means "if," and "sea" is a third-person present subjunctive conjugation of "ser."

Here's an article on conditional statements if you're looking for a more developed article on this type of grammatical structure:

https://study.com/academy/lesson/if-then-statements-in-spanish.html

I hope this helps!