Once again, Spanish broadcaster (RTVE) chose the talent show Operación Triunfo as the way to designate the Spanish entry for the next ESC that will take place in Tel Aviv next May.
Unlike last year's selection process, the contestants knew from the very beginning that one (or more than one) of them, would go to Israel. Furthermore, in early October, the terms in order to find the song were published. It should be pointed out because RTVE not always published them.
According to those terms, on the one hand, the process was opened to the authors in general: all of them who had a mock-up recorded and not published could send it to broadcaster’s web. The authors could suggest the 'OT' contestants who considered themselves ideal to interpret their song, without the need for that suggestion to be binding. At the same time, RTVE and Gestmusic (production company of OT) would invite directly to ‘well-known’ authors to present proposals to the election process.
Still on the theme of the terms, two different committees would have the task to choose ten songs in each call. The twenty songs resulting from the process (10 chosen from among those sent through the web plus 10 direct election) would be assigned to different participants of 'OT 2018', which would be recorded them and these would be posted on rtve.es. These songs would be accessible for two weeks, and the public could vote for their favorites. The three most voted by users would have a guaranteed place in the OT Eurovision Gala. Another committee would choose, among the remaining 17 songs, a maximum of 7 songs that would also go to the final show in January.
When the publication date reached, with no explanation whatsover, only 17 songs were published. And that wasn’t the only dissapointed thing about the process: not all the OT contestants had a song and the public could only listen to a one minute snippet of each proposal; RTVE and Gestmusic wanted people to vote their favourites without listening the complete proposals.
After the voting period ended, the 3rd of January it was announced the list of three more voted proposals: María’s ‘Muérdeme’, Noelia with ‘Hoy vuelvo a reir a otra vez’ and ‘La Clave’ sung by Natalia. One day later, the ten finalists’ list was completed with Carlos Right and the song “Se te nota”, Famous with “No puedo más”, Julia’s “Qué quieres que haga”, Marilia with “Todo bien”, Miki and the song “La venda”, Natalia & Miki and “Nadie se salva” and Sabela with “Hoysoñaré”. Apart from the full line-up, RTVE revealed the date of the election Gala, the 20th of January, and that the full versions of each proposals would be released 48 hours before the Gala.
In a two hours show with familiar faces for Eurovision fans (Eleni Foureira, Pastora Soler or Doron Medalie) and after one single round of televoting, Miki’s “La venda”, with 34% of the votes, was elected to represent Spain in Tel Aviv. His performance was probably the best of the night, above the great favourite until then, María with “Muérdeme”.
“La Venda” is a enjoying party song, the kind of popular Spanish theme that usually animates both sport stadiums and festivals. The song was written by Adriá Salas, a member of ‘La Pegatina’, an alternative rumba and ska sound band radicated in Barcelona.
Now it’s time for Europe (and Australia, of course) to give opinion about this choice and its possibilities to reach a better position for Spain than the last years in the ESC.