La chica se llevó las palmas por su hermoso baile en el recital.

Sentence Discussions Spanish
#1
English Translation

The girl took the cake for her wonderful dancing at the recital.

The RAE has this expression in the singular:

llevarse alguien la palma

loc. verb. Sobresalir o exceder en competencia de otros, mereciendo el aplauso general.

https://dle.rae.es/palma#RZa5x3v

Google Ngrams says:

se llevó las palmas 0.0000007905%
se llevó la palma 0.0000030853%

I should add that this sentence comes from Tatoeba; the Spanish Idioms collection has the expression in the singular: “En la competencia de oratoria, María se llevó la palma por su elocuencia.”

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#2

As far as I know, the idiom is only with the singular, where ‘palma’ means ‘triunfo’. But ‘palmas’ means ‘clapping’ or ‘applause’, so perhaps it’s meant literally.

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