page_title: Military band
section_title: Spain
hierarchical_section_title: Military band / Military bands in Europe / Spain
caption_attribution_description: Español: Banda militar (Legión española)
context_page_description: A military band is a group of personnel that performs musical duties for military functions, usually for the armed forces. A typical military band consists mostly of wind and percussion instruments. The conductor of a band commonly bears the title of Bandmaster or Director of Music. Ottoman military bands are thought to be the oldest variety of military marching bands in the world, dating from the 13th century.
  The military band is capable of playing ceremonial and marching music, including the national anthems and patriotic songs of not only their own nation but others as well, both while stationary and as a marching band. Military bands also play a part in military funeral ceremonies.
  There are two types of historical traditions in military bands. The first is military field music. This type of music includes bugles, bagpipes, or fifes and almost always drums. This type of music was used to control troops on the battlefield as well as for entertainment. Following the development of instruments such as the keyed trumpet or the saxhorn family of brass instruments, a second tradition of the brass and woodwind military band was formed.
context_section_description: Military bands in Spain are of very long-standing. There are reports of primitive bands dating from the Celtiberian tribal and Roman periods. However military music in the modern sense began with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, during the numerous Spanish military campaigns in Europe and the wider world when the first bands were formed in the Tercios of the Spanish Army, equipped with fifes and drums and later with wind instruments of the period. The influence of Spanish military marching bands is very important, especially in Latin America and the Philippines. The characteristic marches are the "touch" of trumpets and horns, and the steady rhythm of drums, with contrasting festive spirit and martial beats.
  Band formations in the Spanish Armed Forces, all under the Band Corps within the Common Corps, follow the British model, but Spanish bands tend to have the most senior bandsmen or bandsman, playing a tuba, positioned at the head of the band or at the second line. He or she is usually the band sergeant major or the band corporal, mostly stationed in between the trombone players or leading a file of tuba and euphonium players in some bands. Bugle bands are part of the Spanish musical tradition since the 19th century when the bugle replaced the fife in the Spanish Army and Navy, and these bands consist of drummers and buglers (or trumpeters in the cavalry dismounted bands since the 20th century). Such formations, when massed together, are led by a Director of Music and a Drum Major (with a Bugle Major or a Trumpet Major depending on the specialty arm). The century-old Corps of Drums of the Regulares is led by a Drum Major and a Bugle Major with personnel playing the snare, bass, and single tenor drums, bugles, North African flutes and sometimes bagpipes, and the Spanish Royal Guard (as well as the 1st King's Immemorial Infantry Regiment of AHQ) sport Corps of Drums playing drums and fifes and wearing 18th-century uniforms. Plain bugles, by tradition, are used in the bugle bands of the Spanish Legion and the Paratrooper Brigade instead of the valved bugles used by other bands and the trumpets and bass drum used by the Royal Guards. Within units based in Galicia and Asturias, military pipe bands are in service as well. Only the Civil Guard and the Royal Guard retain mounted bands with cavalry trumpeters with the latter also having a mounted kettledrummer. 
  Today, there are 26 bands or "Music Units" (Unidad de Música) whose members belong to the Band Corps. They are divided as follows: 15 of them in the Army, 5 in the Navy, and the rest in the Air Force. Their areas of operations include: Andalucía, Aragon, Canarias, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Ceuta, Comunidad Valenciana, Galicia, Madrid, Melilla, and Murcia. A school of music is based in the Carabanchel district of south western Madrid as part of the Central Defence Academy with the purpose of training individuals in the Band Corps.
caption: Plain bugles are traditionally used in the bugle bands of the Spanish Legion.
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