Spanish City - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Dire Straits songwriter Mark Knopfler said in a television interview that the Spanish City held special significance for him as the first place he ever heard loud rock 'n' roll. Dire Straits refer to it in their 1980 song "Tunnel of Love": "Girl it looks so pretty to me / Like it always did / Like the Spanish City to me / When we were kids." For years the song was the unofficial theme song for the fairground, played every morning when the park opened.

Sting (Gordon Sumner), who was born near Newcastle, wrote in his memoir that he whiled away afternoons and evenings in the Spanish City's amusement arcades when he should have been studying for his A levels.

Spanish City (2002) is a novel by Sarah May, set in the fictional north-east town of Setton, home to an amusement park called the Spanish City. Sections of the Spanish City fairground feature in the video that accompanied Tina Cousins's song "Pray" (1998). It also makes a brief appearance in the film The Likely Lads (1976).