Final 6 April 1968 Conductor Norrie Paramor Executive supervisor Clifford Brown | Presenter(s) Katie Boyle Director Stewart Morris | |
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Venue Royal Albert Hall
London, United Kingdom | ||
The Eurovision Song Contest 1968 was the 13th Eurovision Song Contest. The contest was won by the Spanish song "La, la, la", performed by Massiel, closely followed by the United Kingdom and Cliff Richard with "Congratulations!" with a margin of just one point. Originally Spain entered Joan Manuel Serrat to sing "La La La", but his demand to sing in Catalan was an affront to Francoist Spain. Serrat was withdrawn and replaced by Massiel, who sang the same song in Spanish.
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Location
The contest was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The Royal Albert Hall is known for hosting the world's leading artists from several performance genres, sports, award ceremonies, the annual summer Proms concerts and other events since its opening in 1871, and has become one of the United Kingdom's most treasured and distinctive buildings.
Format
1968 was the first time that the Eurovision Song Contest was broadcast in colour. The countries that broadcast it in colour were France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, although in the UK it was broadcast as an encore presentation in colour on BBC Two the next day. Also all of Eastern Europe and Tunisia broadcast the contest. Katie Boyle hosted the contest for a third time.
Vote rigging allegations
In May 2008, a documentary by Spanish film-maker Montse Fernández Villa, 1968. Yo viví el mayo español, centred on the effects of May 1968 in Francoist Spain, and alleged that the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest was rigged by the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who would have sent state television officials across Europe offering cash and promising to buy television series and contract unknown artists. The allegation was based on a testimony by journalist José María Íñigo, a TVE employee at the time, who claimed the rigging was common knowledge and suggested that Spanish record label representatives offered to release albums by Bulgarian and Czech artists (neither Bulgaria nor Czechoslovakia were members of the European Broadcasting Union at the time).
The documentary claimed that the contest should in fact have been won by the United Kingdom's entry – "Congratulations" performed by Cliff Richard – which finished second by one vote. Massiel, the performer of the winning entry, was outraged by the allegations, and claimed that if there had been fixes, "other singers, who were more keen on Franco's regime, would have benefited". José María Iñigo, author of the statement in the documentary, personally apologized to Massiel and said that he had repeated a widespread rumour. Both Massiel and Iñigo accused television channel La Sexta, broadcaster of the documentary, of manufacturing the scandal.
Participating countries
There were no withdrawing, returning, or débutant nations in the 1968 contest.
Conductors
Each performance had a conductor who maestro the orchestra.
Returning artists
Only one artist returned in this year's contest. The winner of the 1962 contest, Isabelle Aubret, returned once more for France.
International broadcasts and voting
The table below shows the order in which votes were cast during the 1968 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country. Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language. Details of the commentators and the broadcasting station for which they represented are also included in the table below.
Non-participating countries
Several non-participating countries also decided to broadcast the contest on their respective television stations.