Spanish Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, teachers, students and Spanish language enthusiasts in general wanting to discuss the finer points of the language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
In the below sentence, I am trying to confirm my understanding of how bendito is being used.
"Estoy muy halagado, muy feliz de que me hayan tomado en cuenta," dice Romeo Santos, bendito entre todas las mujeres.
I want to say that using bendito is a play off of the surname Santos, but is there also the possibility of describing how lucky this gentleman is in having the opportunity to be photographed with six beautiful women for the cover of a magazine, the context of the sentence?
“Bendito entre todas las mujeres” is a play on the well-known phrase of the Hail Mary prayer:
Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee;
blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
(Of course, in Spanish the prayer says “Bendita entre todas las mujeres”, with bendita in the feminine.) It is often employed as a joke when a man is found in a gathering otherwise consisting of women only. It can be employed by the man himself or someone else, but always in a playful way. It sometimes suggests that the presence of a man is unexpected in such gatherings because of usual gender roles and customs. It actually says nothing about the women themselves (whether they're beautiful, or charming, or welcoming), or about how the man feels. It merely points out that the odd one out in an all-women gathering is the man.
For example, yesterday I found myself for a while bendito entre todas las mujeres in a booklet binding workshop (until another man arrived). And in an administrative office where I worked, I was frequently pointed out as bendito entre todas las mujeres because I had no male colleagues.
La palabra "bendito" no hace referencia de ninguna forma al nombre de la persona (Romero Santos), sin embargo, acertaste en tu segunda proposición, en este caso se usa para decir que la persona es afortunada por estar rodeada de muchas mujeres.
