Say ABBA Espan~ol : The Swedish hitmakers may be honored with a Spanish-language tribute album.

You thought the Australian ABBA revival--the group’s songs were crucial to the films “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” and “Muriel’s Wedding,” and form the basis of the unlikely tribute act Bjorn Again--was a strange international twist in the continuing saga of the ‘70s Swedish pop sensation?

Well, prepare for an even odder detour: “ABBA Latino.”

That’s the working title of a project just getting off the ground that will feature ABBA favorites sung--in Spanish--by top-flight Latin music stars.

As strange as the notion may sound, a good deal of ABBA’s worldwide album sales of 250 million came in Spanish-speaking markets.

“ABBA was one of the most popular bands to come out of Europe in Latin America and Spain,” says Bruno Delgranado, vice president of music and talent for MTV Latino. “They really broke big when they redid ‘Chiquitita’ in Spanish in 1979.”

The popularity and influence, Delgranado says, have endured not just with such international Latin pop stars as Luis Miguel, Gloria Estefan and Jon Secada, but also with the crop of new Spanish-language rock bands.

That’s what was on the minds of Atlantic Records artists and repertoire executives Jolene Cherry and Jennifer Blakeman when they flew to Stockholm recently to propose the project to ABBA’s representatives. They returned with the blessings of Stig Anderson, the group’s longtime song publisher and sometime writing partner.

Now Cherry and Blakeman are working with Delgranado and WEA Latino to line up artists. The next step is to try to get the former members of ABBA involved.

“We’re working on the idea of having the ABBA women doing duets with other artists and the group producing some of the songs,” Blakeman says.

Gorel Hanser, the managing director of ABBA’s Mono Music company, says the members of the group, which disbanded in the early ‘80s, have not been contacted about the project, but she predicts that they will be intrigued by the “ABBA Latino” proposal.

“They’re honored and maybe a bit surprised about all this renewed interest in their music,” she says.

Atlantic’s Blakeman is also surprised at how receptive people have been to this idea.

“Everyone I talk to, the minute I say what it is we’re proposing they start drooling,” she says. “It’s something I wasn’t quite expecting. I thought it would be much harder to get people excited about this.”