Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009

Eurovisión 2009: El retorno

From 24 November to 17 December 2008, songs could be submitted to TVE through MySpace. Then, an online vote, held from 19 December 2008 to 20 January 2009, chose the 50 songs to go through the next rounds. 30 of these qualified for the shows (three semi-finals and a final) that were broadcast live by TVE from the Casino l'Aliança del Poblenou theatre in Barcelona. The semi-finals (on 14, 21 and 28 February) and the final (on 28 February) were hosted by popular singer Alaska and co-hosted by sports reporter Miguel Serrano.

Though similar to TVE's selection for the 2008 contest, Salvemos Eurovisión, various changes to the format have occurred, including the introduction of a split televoting and jury selection for the televised rounds. The jury consisted of five people, one of which was selected by the public. The split between televoting and jury was the same as that which the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organiser of the Eurovision Song Contest, will use in the final of the contest.

Online selection

978 entries were uploaded to MySpace to participate in the selection process. Only 455 were accepted by TVE because the rest of them did not qualify according to the rules. Unlike the previous year, the entries were allocated to 10 categories, with the five acts with most votes in each category proceeding to the next rounds. Another change in the online vote from last year was that instead of voting on the MySpace page, voters were only able to vote on the TVE website in order to cut down on fake voting. Every user was able to cast 20 votes each day, five per candidate.

The ten categories and the number of songs competing in each are shown below:

Out of the 50 songs selected, the top 5 in each of the 10 categories, the 20 with the most votes qualified directly for the semi-finals. As for the remaining 30 songs, they competed in auditions and the jury chose 10 of them to go through the semi-finals. The 5 qualifying songs within each of the 10 categories are shown below, with the direct qualifiers highlighted:

Auditions

Auditions before TVE's jury to choose the 10 last qualifiers to the semi-finals were held at the Casino l'Aliança del Poblenou in Barcelona on 31 January 2009. 30 acts competed for those 10 spots in the semi-finals: the acts that finished in the top five in each of the ten categories in the online voting, but failed to finish, out of those fifty, in the overall top 20 by number of votes. Initially, Sin Tanto and Depresión Post-Parto had the right to participate in the auditions, but they withdrew from the competition and were replaced by Antonio Moreno Bermúdez and José Antonio Santiago Beltrán respectively. TVE reported the auditions live on their official website.

Live shows

The three semi-finals were held at the Casino l'Aliança del Poblenou in Barcelona on 14, 21, and 28 February, leading up to the final on 28 February 2009, the same night as the third semi-final. Each semi-final contained ten songs. From each semi-final, four songs qualified directly for the final, decided by 50% jury voting and 50% televoting, giving a total of 12 qualifiers.

Initially, the final was planned to take place on 7 March 2009 and there was going to be a second chance round before the final. Three song would have qualified directly for the final from each semi-final and the fourth placed songs would qualify for a second chance televote. After the second semi-final, TVE changed the plans: it was decided to move the date of the final and hold the third semi-final and the final jointly, and as a result, the fourth placed songs of the first two semi-finals qualified directly for the final. TVE claimed that the schedule was changed to aid the winning artist in preparing their performance, choreography and preview video for Eurovision, but the Spanish media assumed the decision was taken due to the low ratings the shows were getting.

Semi-final 1

Ten songs competed in the first semi-final on 14 February 2009. Melody y Los Vivancos, La La Love You and Noelia Cano qualified directly for the final. There was a tie for fourth place between La Red de San Luis and Gran Baobab, but as Gran Baobab got more votes from televoting, they qualified for the second chance round (when the second chance round was scrapped after the second semi-final, they qualified directly for the final).

During the show, Víctor Escudero, one of the five candidates shortlisted in the online vote to become the fifth jury member, was chosen by TVE's own fourth jury members (50%) and televoting (50%). The guest artists were Tequila and Fangoria, host Alaska's band. Tequila opened the show performing the 1974 Eurovision winner "Waterloo", and later they sang their hit "Salta". Fangoria performed their latest single "Más es más".

There were some technical problems with the microphones and Melody had to restart her performance. Once the semi-final was over, the dance company Los Vivancos announced their withdrawal from the competition due to the lack of technical and artistic resources in the production of the show, and because their bid was being promoted as Melody even though it was a joint bid. Melody announced that she would go on in the competition with some other dancers.

Semi-final 2

Ten songs competed in the second semi-final on 21 February 2009. Soraya, Virginia and Jorge González qualified directly for the final, while Salva Ortega qualified for the Second Chance round (when the second chance round was scrapped after the second semi-final, he qualified directly for the final). Rosario Flores and Nena Daconte were the guest artists. Rosario opened the show with the 1970 Eurovision Spanish entry "Gwendolyne", and later she performed "No dudaría". Nena Daconte performed the 1965 Eurovision winner "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" and closed the show with their hit single "Tenía tanto que darte".

After the criticism received for the production of the first semi-final, TVE enlarged the stage and improved the sound and lighting of the venue.

Semi-final 3 and Final

On 28 February 2009, the third semi-final and the final were held jointly at the Casino l'Aliança del Poblenou theatre in Barcelona, although the final was planned to take place on 7 March 2009. Carlos Baute, Chipper and Nancys Rubias were the guest artists in the show, singing the Israeli Eurovision winning entries "A-Ba-Ni-Bi", "Hallelujah", and "Diva" respectively.

Semi-final 3

Ten songs competed in the third semi-final. Santa Fe, Mirela, Isi and Julia Bermejo qualified for the final.

Final

The Final was held right after the third semi-final. Twelve songs competed. Melody and Soraya got the same total amount of points, but as Soraya got the most televotes, she was declared the winner. Santa Fe finished 3rd and Mirela finished fourth. They were the top quarter of the vote.

Artists

Among the artists who had submitted songs to participate and didn't qualify to the televised rounds, there were some recognizable names like Tontxu and Un Pingüino en mi Ascensor as well as acts that had already participated in past Spanish pre-selections, like Coral (2008), Rebeca (2007), Bizarre (2008), Innata (2008) or Arkaitz (2008). Past participants who did qualify once again for the televised rounds are Santa Fe (2007), Mirela (2007), Yulia (2005) and Dulce (2000). Anabel Conde, who finished second in the Eurovision Song Contest 1995 representing Spain, joined Roel's bid and provided the backing vocals for him in the second semi-final.

Problems

In spite of the changes introduced by TVE, the security of the online voting process was put into question once again. On 21 December 2008, the score of the songs that were leading most of the categories, including the songs with the most votes overall, was briefly reduced to zero on the official website's ranking due to technical problems. On 24 December, TVE announced that votes would be deducted from entries due to fraudulent voting. 4,300 votes were removed from seven entries online, most of which coming from the Hip Hop group.

At Eurovision

Spain automatically pre-qualified for the final of the contest as one of the "Big Four". Following a draw in Moscow, Soraya performed last, 25th in the running order. Soraya was accompanied on stage by three female backing vocalists (Noemí Gallego, Verónica Ferreiro and Nora Gallego) and two male dancers (Ukrainian Dima Oleschenko and Russian Alexey Postolovski). A new Eurovision version of the song "La noche es para mí" was revealed at the contest. It would finish 24th, scoring 23 points.

Radio presenter Joaquín Guzmán commentated the event for TVE for the first time. TV journalist Iñaki del Moral was the Spanish spokesperson. José Luis Uribarri, historical commentator of the event, was the head of the jury.

Controversies

Due to its commitments to broadcast the Madrid Open tennis tournament, Spain's public broadcaster Televisión Española (TVE) broadcast the 2009 Contest second semi-final on a tape delay on its second channel TVE2 approximately 66 minutes after the show began in Moscow, and used a backup jury rather than televoting to decide its votes. Due to this rule violation, it was announced that Spain would eventually face sanctions, although these sanctions would not affect its participation in Moscow. Due to another conflict of interest, Spain had already switched to broadcast the second semi-final rather than the first, which also led to criticisms from the delegations of Andorra and Portugal, which stated that they would have experienced an advantage from a Spanish vote due to their similar cultures.

The day after the semifinal, El Mundo speculated that this delay may have been done on purpose in order to prevent Spain from winning and hosting the contest, speculating that RTVE may not actually want to host the contest if Spain were to win. A statement in ABC had cited technical difficulties for the delay.

OGAE Second Chance Contest 2009

Despite finishing fourth place in the Spanish national final, Mirela won her chance to represent Spain in the OGAE Second Chance Contest 2009 With 880 votes, beating Melody who finished second, Isi finishing third, and Santa Fe finishing fourth. Mirela represented Spain in the 2009 OGAE with "Nada es comparable a ti", finishing in third place behind Denmark and Sweden.