On February 1st the attention has been focused on the southern edge of Europe as one of the countries that has struggled the most during the last decade to reach a top 10 place at Eurovision, held a one night selection show where, after six different acts were performed Barei with the song Say Yay was proclaimed winner of the night. This is the first time Spain will be represented by a song sung completely in English. 

The Songs

RTVE´s internal jury composed among others by Federico Llano (head of delegation for Spain) and Toñi Prieto (network´s head of entertainment) chose six songs and six artist representing different musical styles that tonight got a chance to defend their song live. This year the Spanish broadcaster RTVE decided to get the performances even closer to what they should look like at the Eurovision Song Contest and with that aim, all the contestants performed their songs with live choirs, something not usual in Spanish national finals. This were the chosen songs:

• Un mundo mas feliz – Maverick

With a very latin spirit and by the hand of the famous latin producer Juan Magán, this song tries to bring back to Europe the latin roots of Spain. He brought to the stage a performance with a lot of latin dancing that including a dancer that came from the audience and joined him.

• Say Yey – Barei

Different from whatever has been seen in a Spanish selection before, this song was specially written by Barei for this occasion and features a big choir that together with the singer make the attention go to the vocal performance from the very first second. On stage Barei brought the big choir with her and a pair of sporty shoes that she moved with grace, dancing along to the song.

• Victorious – Xuso Jones

This song counts on Peter Boström among its songwriters and brought the Swedish touch to the night. With the stage illuminated in blue colors he took the stage surrounded by a choir that pushed the song forward together with his voice, as he stood most of the performance still.

• Dias de alegría – Salva Beltrán

A song about positive life messages partially composed by its singer and that intended to bring on stage some of the Spanish passion for life with drums and happy dances.

• La vida solo es una –  María Isabel

Released as part of her come back album, María Isabel chose it as her first attempt at representing Spain in the Senior contest after having won the Junior edition in 2004. She portrayed her song on stage together with the dancers that accompanied her on the videoclip.

• Now Electric –  Nana

The singer who became popular in Spain after taking part in an artistic project in a very popular show, presents this song defined as the most “indie” style song of the night. With a little technical problem at the beginning of the performance that didn´t allow her to do her a cappella solo, she carried out a performance in a very rocky style.

The show

The night started with a powerful performance by eurovision winner Loreen, of her classic Euphoria, which wasn´t the only performance of the night as she was joined by Edurne and a medley of classics performed by different hopefuls from past national selections in Spain. But the familiar faces for the Spanish audience did not stop there as it was Anne Igartiburu once again the host in charge of hosting the event.

The contestants were given the chance to appeal the audience to vote for them in different occasions by asking directly for the vote or answering questions from the audience.

The result 

The representative was chosen with three different juries being involved in the final result. An on set jury composed of Edurne , Loreen and Carlos Marín had a 30% of the decision in their hands, juries from across Europe had another 30% and finally the televote was given a 40%.

Both the televote and juries on stage gave their highest votes to the singer Barei and only the international vote disagreed by voting Dias de alegría  as their favorite song, this was decided by the combination of votes given by France, Italy, United Kingdom and Sweden. The scoreboard ended as follows:

Say Yay  114 points

Victorious 94 points

Dias de alegria 72 points

La vida solo es una 68 points

Un mundo mas feliz 66 points

Now  66 points

Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest

This will be the second time in the last five years that Spain chooses its representative through a televised show, the last time being in 2014 when the until then unknown Ruth Lorenzo raised to victory and went on to get a 10th position in the final show of the contest, a place that was only achieved in recent years by Pastora Soler in 2012 with the ballad Quédate Conmigo.

Last year the Spanish network internally chose Edurne with the Swedish produced song Amanacer to represent the country, and achieved a 21st position with 15 votes in the final voting.

Below you can see Barei in tonight’s performance of Say Yay which we will hear in Stockholm in May:

Below you can watch a compilation of the last 5 years of Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest. We did our best to  to find our greatest footage, and maybe you’ll see something you haven’t seen before.