"Cómo olvidar que volabas", how to translate it?

Question

I'm translating this song to English. At 1:50 the lyrics are

¿Cómo olvidar que volabas?

I've seen various translation around the net and people translate it to

"How could I forget that

you flew / you are flying / you were flying, etc.?"

But I'm not sure about these translations for some reason. I mean, "fly" in what sense - was "it" (the love) that good that she seemed to be flying? Or maybe "fly away"?

I also learned that "volar" can mean "disappear" or maybe "suddenly left", but for the translation

How could I forget that you suddenly left?

I'm also not sure about it, as I don't think it fits the other lines right.

What is the correct translation here?

Answer 1

Looking at the original lyrics, volar doesn't seem to mean "to flee, to leave" here. It just means "to fly" in a figurative sense, though what Enrique Iglesias actually meant is difficult to guess.

Volar does sometimes mean "to leave", but mostly it's found in the preterite, that is, it's used with a grammar that suggests a finished action (volaste = "you left").

As it is, in the imperfect (pasado imperfecto), the song reads as saying "you flew" as a habitual past action. This is what most of the previous verses deal with, i. e. things as they used to be. So a better English translation would be "How to forget that you used to fly?".