Eurovision, the most anticipated song festival by millions of followers, one more year is being prepared to choose who will be the next winner. This event, officially known as the Eurovision Song Contest, has not only captured the attention of the European public, but the success has crossed borders of our continent, thus becoming an event awaited by many people around the globe.
37 are the states that participate in the 68th edition of this contest, which will be held in Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden, after Loreen’s victory with the song Tattoo a year ago.
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Spain has been participating intermittently in the Song Festival since its debut in 1961 with Being with you by Conchita Bautista and has always performed in the grand finale. Our country is the one that accumulates the most years no winner in Eurovision. In the last 23 years, she has only reached the podium once, thanks to the performance of Chanel Terrero and her Slomo, Spain achieved third place in 2022.
Operación Triunfo 2001 marked a before and after in the Spanish television contests and it was a boom. After the success, the country tried to make the winner, Rosa López, and her powerful voice resonate in the same way in Europe. The singer represented our country in a year that seemed like we would triumph in Tallinn, Estonia, since, started as one of the favorites.
Europe’s Living a Celebration It was the song with which the artist performed in 2002 at the Festival along with her colleagues who acted as backup singers: Geno, Chenoa, Gisela, David Bisbal and David Bustamante. The composer of this song was Toni Ten, along with his brother Xasqui, who included the last arrangements. Both had already produced other hits of the time such as hard to peel of Rebeca or I want to dance of Sonia and Selena.
Far from what many may think, the Eurovision hit It was not written for Granada, the first bars were already a reality before the program management assigned López the mission of representing Spain. Toni explains in an interview with The confidential that this topic could not be “closer to the Eurovision context” and to its time, that of the arrival of the euro: “It was the time of the currency change. It talks about something that was not between people, but between countries. Before we all went our own way and now there was one thing that united us. The background was that change that occurred in Europe.”
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Little by little, the song overcame the necessary screenings until it made it into the election gala, where it emerged as a favorite with a 49.9% of televotingdespite the fact that David Bisbal with Latin heart and David Bustamante with The magic of the heart They also had great support. After being elected, the relevant changes to adapt it 100% to the interpreter.
Finally, on May 25, 2002 at around 9:29 p.m. ‘Rosa de España’ burst in with her teammates on stage in Tallinn to demonstrate what they had worked on over all those months. During the three minutes of the performance, 13,203,000 people were waiting to see if, this time, Spain would manage to sneak onto the podium. With an 88.5% share, Rosa and the ‘triumphs’ achieved the highest number of Eurovision viewers recorded in our country, according to data from Statista.
He seventh place of the Spanish representative, extinguished the dream of millions of viewers, the forecasts were not fulfilled and those 81 points that Europe gave us caused the spirit of an entire country to fade. Although for the producer, “being in the top ten was already good news.”
