Candela
Fire, literally — and in Cuba a person who is a force of nature, a situation that has gone badly wrong, or the grief you are giving someone.
Related lesson: Cuban Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
¡Esa mujer es candela!
That woman is something else!
La cosa está en candela, llevamos tres días sin agua.
Things are dire — we've had no water for three days.
Me dieron candela toda la reunión.
They gave me a hard time all through the meeting.
What It Actually Means
Candela is an ordinary Spanish word for a flame or a candle that Cuba has turned into a general-purpose metaphor for intensity. Applied to a person — ser candela — it means formidable, wild, unstoppable, and it is usually a compliment with a raised eyebrow attached. Applied to a situation — estar en candela — it means the thing has gone badly wrong. Directed at someone — dar candela — it means you are giving them hell.
Where It Comes From
The word itself is unremarkable: Latin candēla, the same root that gives English “candle”. Nothing exotic is needed to explain it, and this entry will not invent an African or Taíno origin for a Latin noun. What is Cuban — and broadly Caribbean, since the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico use several of the same phrases — is the extension: fire as a measure of character, of crisis and of punishment, all in one lexical item.
How Natives Use It
Three constructions carry almost all the traffic. Ser candela: ese niño es candela, of a child who never stops. Estar en candela: of an economy, a marriage or a Tuesday. Dar candela: of a boss, a teacher, a rival team. As a bare exclamation, ¡candela! works as “blimey” — surprise pitched somewhere between admiration and alarm. It is entirely usable in mixed company, which distinguishes it from most words this expressive.
Common Pitfall
Do not assume the compliment. Eres candela said to a colleague is affectionate between friends and pointed between rivals; the tone decides, and learners who copy the phrase without the tone tend to get the wrong one. Keep the constructions apart, too: estar candela and estar en candela are not interchangeable, and only the second means what you probably want. And do not read it as heat in the erotic sense — Cuba has plenty of vocabulary for that, and this is not it.