Camilo Sesto, a Spanish songwriter, singer and producer whose romantic songs have sold more than 180 million copies worldwide, died on Sunday in Madrid. He was 72 and lived in Madrid.

His manager, Eduardo Guervós, told the Spanish public broadcaster TVE that he had died in a hospital after suffering two heart attacks, The Associated Press reported. In recent years he had also struggled with kidney problems.

With a tenor voice that could be gentle and imploring and then rise to impassioned peaks, Mr. Sesto became a pop superstar across the Spanish-speaking world in the 1970s. In hits like the wall-of-sound 1978 pop production “Vivir Así Es Morir de Amor” (“To Live Like This Is To Die of Love”), he sang about romance, longing and heartache. He garnered more than 50 No. 1 hits worldwide. Mr. Sesto wrote nearly all of the songs he recorded on more than two dozen albums, and he also wrote and produced hits for Spanish and Latin American pop singers including Miguel Bosé, José José and Ángela Carrasco.

Camilo Blanes Cortés was born on Sept. 16, 1946, in the town of Alcoy in the province of Alicante. As a child he sang at weddings and christenings. In the mid-1960s, he joined Beatles-style rock bands that brought him to Madrid: Los Dayson and Los Botines. He started a solo career with the producer and songwriter Juan Pardo as a mentor, changing his name first to Camilo Sexto and then to Camilo Sesto; “sexto” is Spanish for “sixth,” and he was the sixth Camilo Blanes in his family.