Eurovision Song Contest 1969

(TVE) staged the 1969 contest in Madrid, after winning the for with the song "La La La" by Massiel. This is the only time that the contest has been held in Spain. The venue selected was the , an opera house opened in 1850. After having to close in 1924 due to damage to the building, the venue reopened in 1966 as a concert hall and the main concert venue of the Spanish National Orchestra and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra. At that time, it also housed the Madrid Royal Conservatory and the Royal Higher College of Performing Arts. The press room set up for the event, equipped with a giant colour screen, twelve television monitors, telex, teletype, and telefax machines, telephones, one hundred typewriters with different keyboards, and translation services, was located within the building and had capacity for six hundred journalists. On 27 March 1969, the hosted a cocktail reception at its Madrid facilities, presided over by Manuel Fraga, the Minister of Information and Tourism on whom TVE depended at the time, and attended by all the participating artists, executives from the participating broadcasters, numerous accredited journalists, and local authorities. == Participants ==

Broadcasters from sixteen countries participated in the 1969 contest. Of the seventeen countries that participated in 1968 only was absent, officially because (ORF) could not find a suitable representative, but it was rumoured that the broadcaster refused to participate in a contest staged in Franco-ruled Spain. Several of the performing artists had previously represented the same country in past editions: Simone de Oliveira had represented ; Kirsti Sparboe had represented and ; and Louis Neefs had represented . In addition, Siw Malmkvist representing had represented ; and Romuald representing had represented . == Format ==

The event was presented by Laurita Valenzuela, who was dressed for the occasion by . The surrealist artist Salvador Dalí designed the publicity material for the contest. The musical director was Augusto Algueró, who made the arrangements and conducted the 52-piece orchestra during the opening and ending acts. The show opened with a rendition of the Eurovision tune by the organ, followed by the orchestra performing the previous year's winning song, "La, la, la". The interval act consisted of a surrealist documentary titled , directed by Javier Aguirre, with music by Luis de Pablo. The show ended with the orchestra performing a medley of previous Eurovision winning songs during the credits. The event had a budget of around 5 million pesetas (€30,050). For the set built on the stage, the TVE scenography divisions in Madrid and Barcelona, headed by Bernardo Ballester, designed ten different proposals and built a scale model for each of them. These were shortlisted into three designs for further consideration, from which one was selected. The final design included the 5,000-pipe fixed organ already present at the back of the stage, a scoreboard on the side, a central steel sculpture created by surrealist artist , and fifteen thousand red and pink carnations. Since they were not allowed to make any modifications to the stage, not even hammering a nail into it, the set was prefabricated in more than three hundred modules that, brought from Prado del Rey, were assembled on-site. For better visibility, the floor of the set was raised above the stage. TVE had full access to the concert hall starting from the evening of 16 March, immediately after the audience and staff of that day's regular season concert had left the venue, which allowed its stage crew to begin assembling the set right away, its technical crew to begin setting up the equipment afterwards, and the orchestra to start rehearsals on 22 March. This was the second contest to be filmed and transmitted in colour, even though TVE did not have the required colour equipment for such a big event at the time. It had to rent such equipment from the German ARD, which was provided by Fernseh and brought to Madrid from Cologne. Five colour television cameras inside the concert hall, three of them mounted on cranes, were used to broadcast the event. To avoid interruptions in the broadcast, the television signal was transmitted to the other broadcasters feeding the Eurovision network by two simultaneous ways: via the terrestrial microwave relay link network through France, and via the Intelsat III F-2 satellite through Italy. It was the first time that the contest resulted in a tie for first place, with four entries each gaining 18 votes. Since the rules in place at the time allowed more than one winner, all four countries were declared joint winners ex aequo. This caused a problem concerning the medals that were to be distributed to the winners, as there were not enough to go round, so only the singers received their medals on stage; The medals were presented by previous year's winner Massiel, after which all four winning songs were reprised. == Contest overview ==

Spokespersons Each participating broadcaster appointed a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective jury via telephone. Known spokespersons at the 1969 contest are listed below. • Eugène Senelle • Brendan O'Reilly • • • Colin Ward-Lewis • Višnja Trputec == Detailed voting results ==

's dress Every participating broadcaster assembled a jury panel of ten people. Every jury member could give one vote to his or her favourite song, except that representing their own country. Although neither spokesperson made any errors in their announcements, EBU scrutineer Clifford Brown asked both the Spanish and the Monegasque spokespersons to repeat their votes. No adjustments were made to the scoring as a result of the repetition. == Broadcasts ==

Each participating broadcaster was required to relay the contest live via its networks after receiving it through the Eurovision network. Non-participating EBU member broadcasters were also able to relay the contest as "passive participants". Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in 26 countries including Tunisia; in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union received via Intervision; and in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, and Puerto Rico. 30 radio and television commentators are reported to be present at the contest, with an estimated global audience of 250 to 400 million viewers. Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below. } } ==Notes==