Benidorm Fest it is! Spain’s RTVE has finally revealed further details about its new national selection. In short: It will include 12 songs; there will be three shows (two semi-finals and a final); and the submission window closes on October 29.
Head of Delegation Eva Mora broke the news today in a TV show. Mora, who was appointed HoD last month, was asked if Spain would win next year. “It is a long run, and we’re going to do a good job,” she said. “It took Italy 10 years of good work to win.”
There will be four phases and two ways of selecting entries. Interested artists will be able to enter their songs via the web at rtve.es. On top of this there will be some well known singers and songwriters invited to participate. Benidorm Fest is scheduled for late January, and there will be three shows.
Six acts will perform in each semi-final and three will qualify to the final. One of the six finalists will go on to represent Spain at Eurovision 2022.
Anyone over the age of 16 on May 1st 2022 can apply, but only Spanish authors and singers are allowed. They need to either have a Spanish nationality or live permanently in Spain. If it’s a group, at least 50% of the artists must meet that criteria.
Composers are only allowed to submit one song as main authors and another two as collaborators, while singers can only perform on one entry. All songs must include lyrics in either Spanish or one of Spain’s other official languages (Basque, Catalan and Galician). It can have up to 35% of its lyrics in another language.
Benidorm Fest: Four phases
Benidorm Fest will consist of four different phases. During the first phase, submissions are open for one month: from today until October 29. Artists will either submit their songs or be invited to participate. RTVE will also be able to match an invited singer with a submitted song.
Phase 2 is the song selection. During the autumn, a jury made of music professionals and RTVE staff will pick up to 12 participants and six back-up acts. A minimum of two entries will be chosen from among those submitted via the web process.
RTVE will observe gender equality, and will try to combine big names with “little discoveries”, as well as a variety of musical genres. Phases three and four will be the semi-finals and final of Benidorm Fest.
Benidorm Fest: Mixed voting system
RTVE will introduce a new voting system. While last year it was the audience who picked Blas Cantó’s “Voy a quedarme”, in 2022 Spain will combine three different voting segments.
One half of the vote corresponds to a professional jury. 60% of their members will be Spanish and 40% will come from abroad. The remainder is the public vote: 25% televote and 25% a demoscopic sample of the Spanish population.
This system is similar to that of Sanremo, and it intends to make the final result “as representative as possible of the Spanish population’s taste”.
The race to represent Spain at Eurovision 2022 is on. Who would you like to see in Benidorm? Do you think Benidorm Fest will be a success? What do you make of the rules? Let us know in the comment section below!
Very off topic, but RAI has a few hours left to announce the host city
wait what?
Seriously, how do you know this? Are we finally going to find out where the whole city will be?
No? There has never been a deadline for host city announcement.
I actually found article that listed out a timeline of when each host Cindy was an ounce, and the latest was actually Germany then announced it in October 2010. So it’s not the first time that whole city is announced very late.
Calm down, calm down. They were probably rumours but it’s been said that RAI would announce the city in September and tbh I was just joking
Ok let me explain I misunderstood a source and thought RAI was going to announce the host city in September. Hope you understand
I’m between hopeful and skeptical but I like why I see. I’d probably elevate the number of contestants up to 16 or so but better quality than quantity and it’s just the first edition. I’d also widen the submission period but I suppose artists/composers have been already working in their songs.
I’m happy with the voting system and segments. Looks coherent to me.
Can’t wait to see how all of this developes.
Compared to the utter debacles of other Spanish NFs, this seems like a reasonably thought out format. I just hope it does work out.
Can’t wait for this NF! Hope Spain won’t disappoint us!
Please, please, PLEASE let this work out! I’m both nervous and excited for this. I want so badly for Spain to do better in Eurovision, so I hope that there will be great songs, great singers, and great staging there. I hope that Benidorm will do very well, and that things will look so much better for Spain in the very near future and beyond. Even if Spain needs to take inspiration from Sanremo for how they do things, and take inspiration from Latin America for current Latin pop trends, then so be it. I rather Spain choose great songs… Read more »
12 songs is little for 3 nights, especially when i expect the interest for this festival to be high among artists and labels. hopefully rtve manages to select the best songs, even though their taste has been kinda out of touch lately…
Ok so the act will be chosen by 50% jury (local and international), 25% televote, 25% demoscopic jury but what means exactly a demoscopic jury? Is it by ages like Sweden does? Or socio professionals categories? Or people representant each regions of the country like Norway and Portugal do? And mainly how they will be chosen, how many will be selected, are they volunteers?
if the demoscopic jury is like the sanremo one, it’s basically a sample of a couple hundred spanish people representing all demographics and casting their votes. sorta like a mini televote. it serves no purpose really lmao.
Ok so for me this demoscopic jury is useless, how only few hundreds of people can represent the taste of more than 40 millions of people, so put the televote at 50%, or let the eurofans from all around the world voting online too for example, it will bring again more interest from non spanish people for this festival. And I hope for them that the fact they want to do that at the end of January won’t interfere with others NF.
Its not that complicated. Spain is just going to the full extent to copy sanremo, demographic jury and all, given how good sanremo is and how useless everything else spain tries is. its a fine strategy. And of course they arent going to let eurovision fans decide a contestant when that has absolutely zero past history of being successful lmao. Especially when the vast majority of spanish eurofans still think diva pop numbers do well at eurovision. RAI goes out of its way to make sanremo as inaccessible as possible for foreign viewers, and it is still a well loved… Read more »
Well, the demoscopic jury can avoid that a particular fanbase “hijacks” the televote, in case some artist is very popular with a specific group of very engaged people (Bilal’s win in France being a perfect example). But if an artist is popular with people from all backgrounds, then it can become an extra advantage (Ermal in Sanremo 2021, for example). I guess the problem is that it’s never very clear how they came up with this sample of the population. It may also leads to a more “conventional” voting, benefiting “behaved” entries. In Sanremo, the demoscopic was rough on Maneskin… Read more »
Big fanbases can ruined a NF’s results but it can brings the attention of many new people for the show, and for Eurovision too, all the things that can increase the audience and the number of voters is not a so bad thing. Many Bilal’s fans are now big eurofans and follow Eurovision and Junior Eurovision like crazy. As for the demoscopic jury I think this system is useful for the opinion polls in politic for example but to choose a song that should make shine a country internationally, and should be a success in the world, I don’t see… Read more »
I mean give more power to the spanish eurofans, give them 50% of the decision, they know very well Eurovision like nobody else, instead of sharing it with people who probably don’t care about Eurovision.
Or do a 50% televote based on an online voting where the spanish and international eurofans could vote, it would be the perfect match with the 50% jury who is spanish and international, the results would be perfectly balanced, and the interest for this festival would be international.
Just to be clear: I’m not against having someone with a big fanbase in a national final, even more when this fanbase is young and helps to oxigenate the whole thing. But I think producers always should be careful about keeping the competition as fair as possible. And this is a big challenge when the intention is to have a final with both established artists and newcomers, which seems to be the case here. The demoscopic jury is just one more way of trying to keep things balanced, like the age groups in Melfest or the “eurofans voting” in the… Read more »
Ok thank you for your reply, really appreciated, I agree with you about the fact that a NF has to be as fair as possible, yes that’s true a demoscopic jury can be made of no esc followers so they will be more biased than the public voting, assuming that the public voting are the eurofans, because if there are one or two big names involved in this festival this specific jury will vote for them like they know them more than the others on the contrary of the eurofans who will vote for the best song, so yeah this… Read more »
Being Spanish and a eurovision fan i am sorry to say Spanish Eurofan choices would have failed the same as TVE´s. Both are really out of touch, remember the preference for Coral Segovia in 2008 when “La revolución sexual” is a Spanish pop classic still today. I think the best would be to engage the wider public (not just fans) in voting so the song is popular enough and not calculated for Eurovision, but how to get there…i don´t know.
I guess the main word for RTVE right now is “patience”. If they want to make Benidorm work, they’ll need to stick to it until they find a way to correct the mistakes they’ll most probably make on this first years. Everybody wants to have their Sanremo or Melfest, but it takes time to build a tradition, to make artists trust the competition, to bring a wider audience to the shows, etc. This is a fantastic opportunity to have a fresh start and leave all the drama from past years behind. Let’s hope they don’t waste it.
Demoscopic jury is like the 100 Swiss jury (which is normal people which preferences matches what have succeeded at ESC) which chose their last 3 entries, but with a fair amount of votants based on the population of the region. Something alike to how the US do their election process. I don’t think Spain will choose demoscopic just like Switzerland or Germany, but a similar process is expected.
Demoscopic is not useless. It can really work well, as for Switzerland these last 3 years, Italy and Germany (let’s keep in mind Demoscopic Jury chose Aly Ryan as the best option for Eurovision). Let’s just hope Spain grab their people’s jury fair and square
But Switzerland used a national and international jury not a demoscopic to choose their songs and Italy is special as San Remo is not a national final for esc, after all we will see but I’m not convinced .
The national jury you mentioned was a 100 member public panel made up of ESC fans/ casual television viewers.
At least in theory, sounds like a good format. The use of a demoscopic jury shows they’re using Sanremo as a reference. I’m not bothered with the low number of entries for a festival disputed in 3 nights, as long the entries are good.
I’m looking forward to watching this selection, it sounds promising and it’s the first time I see Spain seriously trying to improve
I’m very interested to see what Spain brings. I think I’m in the minority here but I’ve liked all of their recent entries. I know this comment will be controversial but I’d really like to see Manel Navarro give Eurovision another go. His musical style has changed so much since Eurovision 2017 and the ballads he’s released recently have been amazing. His live vocal has also really improved. I doubt he would do it again after all the abuse he got last time he did it (unfairly may I say) but I’d be supportive of it if he did decide… Read more »
wasn’t he friends with one of the judges at the national final who ultimately gave him the win over the public’s choice? i would not like to see him back…
No he wasn’t. His only connection to one of the judges was that he was a guest on his radio show promoting his music, before either of them were even involved in the selection. Manel wasn’t in control of anything RTVE did in the selection of the judges or the rules of the national final. All he did was enter, perform his song and won fair and square.
Most of the hate he recieved came from angry Mirela fans who couldn’t accept that she lost and he won. He did nothing wrong. Period.
Omg , la giuria demoscopica!
Italian Fever : -)
I hope we will hear lots of diversity in the selected songs
I have my fingers crossed that this could get Spain out of the bottom five dumps.
I got mixed feelings about this… Hope everything goes well and Spain finally gets out of that dreaded 6-year streak out of the top20!
I expect high level of diversity considering the richness of their musical market. Give us some latin influences like “Don’t go yet” from Camilla Cabello or Rosalia’s anticipated universe, party and good feeling vibes like Alvaro Soler, grand ballads like “Quedate Conmigo”, plus folk, ethnic, opera, rap and more… I really want to discover more from your music scene and I think this is what people are wainting the most from Spain. It has not to be necesseraly waved by those big names. I’m sure there’s plenty of unknown talents who are just waiting to be heard, to deliver their… Read more »
I really dig this format. Probably the most thought Spain have put into a national final since lord knows when.
12 songs seems a little small but if they are all great then it doesn’t rly matter tbh. hoping it turns out well for Spain
I’d rather have a small number of high-quality songs, than a large number of songs of questionable quality.
thank you! Estonia should take notes
And Lithuania could take Some advice to cut down their Overlong national final.
they already did with pabandom is naujo, and I feel like they have the perfect amount of songs now
Yes, I think the six weeks is enough for that national final. They used to have a really long National final, but having it at the same length as melfest might do some good. Let’s hope Lithuania has a High quality national final next year
Just like when they held Eurocasting
What’s eurocasting?
Spain should send something similar to Maluma, Bad Bunny, Natty Peluso, Rosalia, Luis Fonsi, J. Balvin, Anuel AA & Natalia Lafourcade if they really want to do well. Not boring pop songs!
That’s a pretty random grab bag of Latin artists
J-Balvin and Maluma aren’t Spanish as far as I can recall…
Or Bad Bunny or Luis Fonsi
All of them except for Rosalia aren’t Spanish.
JBalvin and Maluma are both Colombians
Bad Bunny and Luis Fonsi are both Puerto Ricans/ Americans
Natty Peluso is Argentinian
Annuel AA is Dominican
Natalia Lafourcade is Mexican-Chilean with French Grandparents
Spanish Artists I’d like to see are Pablo Lopez, Pablo Alborán, La Oreja de Van Goh, Natalia Jimenez, Lola Indigo, Aitana, C. Tangana, Txarango, among others
Even Belinda counts more like a Latin artist these days as her whole career developed in Mexico, although she was born in Spain and her mom is French.
Edit: another note, Anuel AA is also Puerto Rican. Examples of Dominican artists could be El Alfa, Natti Natasha or Tokischa.
Oh my god you’re right! I was confusing him with El Alfa,
Technically, Belinda could still take part as she was born in Spain but as you said, she’s lived her entire life in Mexico but could pull a Danna Paola on us. I still remember watching her novelas as a kid lol.
Natalia Jimenez was also born in Madrid but developed her career in Mexico.
It’d actually be nice if either Belinda or Natalia Jimenez pulled a Danna Paola tbh, I’ve seen a big part of the Spanish fandom wanting both of them to take part.
Yeah and Portugal should send Anitta or Pabllo Vittar just bcs of the language, shouldn’t they?
Pls be realist, most of the people you just mentioned are in a whole other level and have 0 relation to the contest or even Europe (The only one being Rosalía)
It’s basically like saying Justin Timberlake should represent the UK because he speaks English
there are countless spanish artists doing reggaeton and latin trap lmao no need to travel to puerto rico and colombia to get them