Spain, out of Eurovision after 65 years: its (few) achievements and its (many) failures

BarcelonaAfter 65 years of uninterrupted participation in Eurovision, Spain has withdrawn from the festival to show its disagreement with Israel's continued participation.Thus, there will be no representative from TVE in the next edition of Eurovision, which was held on May 16th in Vienna and marked the 70th anniversary of the song contest. However, the Benidorm Fest, the festival created by RTVE to choose Spain's Eurovision representative, will still take place. The only difference is that this year, the winner of this competition will not go to Eurovision.

Spain's absence from the contest is not insignificant because it is traditionally considered one of the strongest countries in the competition. In fact, it is part of what is known as Big FiveThe group of the five corporations that contribute the most money to the festival. Besides Spain, this group includes Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In its 65-year history at the festival, Spain has experienced everything: some victories but also resounding failures.

The failures

Barefoot and very flamenco, Remedios Amaya participated in Eurovision performing Who steers my boat. It was 1983, and Europe still hadn't quite grasped the blend of traditional and electronic elements, such as synthesizers. The performance received zero points. It wasn't the first time Spain had received no points: Víctor Balaguer (1962) and Conchita Bautista (1965) had also had that dubious honor.

In 1990 the duo Azúcar Moreno represented Spain at the festival, which was held in Zagreb, with the song BanditNow a classic of Spanish music, their performance was plagued with mishaps. Before going on stage, they realized the costumes they had brought weren't the ones they had prepared for the show. From then on, everything went downhill: as soon as they stepped onto the stage, they noticed a technical error was causing their backing tracks to be out of sync with the orchestra, and to everyone's dismay, the duo hurriedly left the stage. After convincing the organizers, they returned and finally performed, achieving fifth place.

Manel Navarro, from Sabadell, was Spain's representative in 2017. Regarding the song with which he participated, Do it for your loverFew remember it, but what no one has been able to forget is the powerful rooster crow that escaped the young singer, who explained that after his performance at the festival he received threats and harassment. However, he initially took the mistake in stride on social media, saying he had enjoyed himself even though "an unwanted guest had crashed the party," and attached a gif of a rooster.

The achievements

Spain has won the Eurovision Song Contest twice. The first time was in 1968 in London, when Massiel performed the song La, la, la, which contained no less than 138 theThanks to the victory, Spain was chosen to organize the festival the following year, which took place in Madrid. The 1969 edition was Spain's second and last victory in the festival – the representative was Salomé with I live singing—but it was also the only edition in which four countries shared first place: Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France. That same year, Austria boycotted the festival by not participating as a show of protest against the Franco dictatorship.

Although Spain has traditionally taken Eurovision very seriously—a competition that has stirred up the most deeply ingrained patriotic sentiments—in 2008, the El Terrat team managed to push the boundaries of the festival. With David Fernández at the helm, Andreu Buenafuente's team invented the singer Rodolfo Chikilicuatre, who always carried a toy guitar named Luciana. This wasn't the only accompaniment this unique singer brought along. original From Argentina: it also featured two chorus girls, Disco and Gráfica, played by Sílvia Abril and Alejandra Jiménez Cascón. Dance the chiki-chiki It was a joke, but it quickly became one of Spain's greatest Eurovision moments.

When Chanel won the Benidorm Fest, she was heavily criticized: that she was a conservative choice and Rigoberta Bandini should have been chosen, that her performance was sexualized... The moment she appeared at Eurovision and gave an electrifying performance, the criticism stopped abruptly. Ultimately, she finished in third place in an edition already affected by the war in Ukraine (in fact, that country won the festival). Chanel's good results seemed to offer a glimmer of hope for Spain at Eurovision, which had spent years languishing in the lower tier of the rankings. Nothing could have been further from the truth: the path started by Chanel has not continued, and subsequent entries, such as Blanca Paloma and Nebulosa, have once again yielded disastrous results.