Welcome to the second episode of “From Eurowho?! to Douze Points!”, a section that follows the different testimonies and opinions given by people who are not keen on Eurovision. In today’s episode, we will take a look at the perspective each of the study’s participants has about the Eurovision Song Contest.
How do they see their country?
When asking people what did they think about the relationship between Eurovision and Spain, negative comments didn’t wait too long before appearing. Biochemistry student Eduardo González thinks that in Spain the main mistake is the promotion of the contest: “I personally think that other countries work harder to promote their entries, as they want lots of people not only to get to know their acts but also their cultures”. Future journalist Jaime Barrionuevo directly blames the public broadcaster: “They do know how to manage all the important stuff related to the contest.”
In fact, private Spanish channel Telecinco has been doing more promotion about Eurovision than RTVE. In the documentary series “Rocío: Contar la verdad para seguir viva”, four different Eurovision contestants (Switzerland, France, Spain, and Bulgaria) have performed their songs. Additionally, the same channel has recently promoted Senhit’s own “Adrenalina”.
Andalusian Montserrat de la Torre sincerely shares her thoughts about the “Spanish Dark Age at Eurovision” : “We have been more than half a decade ending in the bottom of the scoreboard, but we try at least to avoid last place. Spain’s best result in the last 17 years is Pastora Soler’s (also Andalusian) 10th place in 2012, with 97 points.
How do you see Eurovision when several countries get involved together?
When they were asked about Eurovision as an international event, Ukrainian descendant Viktoriya Saulyak raises her voice about the main problem about the competition: “I don’t understand clashes between different countries at Eurovision, for example, Russia and Ukraine. We are not rating countries, we are rating songs because this is a music competition”.
Viktoriya continues telling us more about their family and Eurovision: “Back in 2016, my grandparents came from Ukraine to stay some days with us in Madrid. They watched with us the Grand Final, and we celebrated together Jamala’s victory.
That was all for this week’s episode. Next week we will take a look at the first impressions of some of this year’s songs, and of course, the top-10 songs from the participants in the study. Until then, enjoy the rehearsals in Rotterdam!
