Intro Post

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Introduction

Eurovision 1969 (the year of my mom’s birth) was the most controversial year up to this point, even before the show began. It’s not a controversial year to fans today, unlike Rome 1991 which is still hotly debated among modern fans, but at the time it was very much controversial. There are two big reasons for the controversy: first, that it was hosted in Spain which was at the time a dictatorship ruled by Francisco Franco. Second, the voting sequence had four countries tied for first place, and since there was no tiebreaker rule, the producers decided to make all of them the winner. Many countries were not happy with this decision.

When I did round 1 of my Eurovision blog, I said this was the first Eurovision in a city I’ve been to: Madrid, which is a beautiful city and lots of fun to explore. But now, the oldest Eurovision in a city I’ve been to is Copenhagen 1964. The count of Eurovisions hosted in cities I’ve visited was “anywhere from four to eight” last time, but now that number has increased by eight because I went to Gothenburg (1 contest), Malmö (3), and Copenhagen (3) in 2024, and Basel (1) in 2025. Now the number of Eurovisions where I have visited the host city is anywhere from twelve to sixteen. Sixteen is also the number of competing countries this year, because Austria skipped out. Ostensibly they couldn’t find a representative, but most people believed the real reason was as a protest against Francisco Franco.

Now the contest having four winners is ridiculous for two reasons. First because the EBU should have had a tiebreaker rule, or at least thought of one on the spot. Second because there was one song clearly far better than everything else that should have won outright: “De troubadour” from the Netherlands. The other three winners (Spain, the UK, and France) I remember being likable songs, but not half as good as the Netherlands. There were no nul-pointers this year: Norway landed at the bottom with one point.

The show opens with “Te Deum” on the organ set to a metal sculpture onstage by Amadeo Gabino, then a kickass promotional poster by Salvador Dalí set to an orchestral arrangement of “La la la”. Why did Eurovision have to abolish the orchestral reprises of last year’s winner early on? They were so cool and fun! Then the presenter Laurita Valenzuela comes in to do the show mostly in Spanish. Her diction in Spanish is very clear and quite easy to understand, even with my limited level of Spanish, and she’s a rare presenter who’s more comfortable speaking in French than English. After the intro in Spanish, French, and English, she said “guten Abend” so I thought she was going to give a speech in German, but she just said “good evening” in all the remaining languages.

As with last time, I’ll watch this with Spanish commentary, done by longtime commentator José Luis Uribarri. He last commentated for Spain in 2010 and died two years later.