Spain has regularly changed the selection process used in order to find the country's entry for the contest, either a national final or internal selection (sometimes a combination of both formats) has been held by the broadcaster at the time. Between 1977 and 1999, Spain's entries were selected internally by TVE. Before that, internal selections and national contests, like
Pasaporte a Dublín (
Passport to Dublin) in 1971, were alternated. From 2000, Spain has used various selection formats with different results. In 2000 and 2001, TVE organised a national final called
Eurocanción (
Eurosong), where the Spanish representative was selected for the contest. From 2002 to 2004, the reality television talent competition
Operación Triunfo (the Spanish version of
Star Academy) was used to select the entry, a format that renewed the Spanish audience's interest in the contest and brought three top 10 results in a row, until TVE decided not to host any further editions of the series. In 2005, the national final
Eurovisión 2005: Elige nuestra canción (
Eurovision 2005: Choose Our Song) was organised, where the audience chose their favourite song among a pre-selection made by TVE of unknown artists submitted to them by record labels. The result in the Eurovision final was not good and for 2006, the selection was made internally for the first time since 1999, with a similar result. In 2007, Spain's entry was decided through the
Misión Eurovisión 2007 show, with a disappointing result once again. From 2008 to 2010, the Internet was the key element of the competitions used by RTVE to select the Spanish entry. In 2008, the
social networking website MySpace was involved in the national final ''
(Let's Save Eurovision
). A website was created to make it possible for anyone to upload a song and proceed to a televised final if chosen by online voters or an expert jury. The result improved a little, but not much; nevertheless the interest of the Spanish audience was revived again. The result was the worst in the 2000s (decade): 24th place. In 2010, a similar format, '', selected the Spanish entry, with the best result since 2004 (15th). In 2011, Internet voting was scrapped from the new selection method ''''. After a further disappointing result (23rd), for 2012, RTVE decided to approach an established act,
Pastora Soler, and organise a national final to select her song. A top ten result was achieved for the first time since 2004. The same procedure was repeated in 2013, with
El Sueño de Morfeo as the established act, which turned out one of the most disappointing results (25th out of 26 entries) in the country's Eurovision history; some critics, however, blamed a less-than-stellar performance of an otherwise solid song. In 2014, RTVE decided to return to a multi-artist national final procedure, called ''
(Look who's going to Eurovision''); five artists were invited to participate by RTVE. A top ten result was achieved for the second time in three years. In 2015, for the first time since 2006, both the artist,
Edurne, and the song were selected internally by RTVE. On 18 December 2015, RTVE announced that it would organise a national final in order to select the Spanish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2016. Six acts competed in the national final named
Objetivo Eurovisión, and
Barei won the selection process. The same format was used in 2017, and
Manel Navarro won the selection process; it turned out Spain's first last-place result since 1999. In 2017, RTVE commissioned a
new season of
Operación Triunfo, which returned to TVE after thirteen years, and the series served for the fourth time (after 2002, 2003 and 2004) as the platform to select the Spanish entry for the 2018 contest. The result was disappointing (23rd out of 26 entries), but the 2018 Eurovision final was the most-watched in Spain since 2008. A
further season of the talent show chose the Spanish entry for the 2019 contest with another disappointing result (22nd out of 26 entries). For the 2020 contest, RTVE selected the Spanish entry internally, with
Blas Cantó and the song "
Universo" chosen. Following the cancellation of the contest due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, RTVE was one of the first four broadcasters (the other were Greece's
ERT, Netherlands'
AVROTROS and Ukraine's
UA:PBC) that confirmed its participation for the 2021 edition with the same artist who would have participated for 2020, in this case Cantó. His 2021 entry "
Voy a quedarme" went on to finish in 24th place with six points, marking the sixth time in a row that Spain has finished outside of the top twenty. For the 2022 contest, it was announced that RTVE would use
Benidorm Fest, a revamped version of the
Benidorm Song Festival to select the nation's entry among thirteen candidates. The broadcaster signed a contract with the
regional government of the Valencian Community to hold the event for four editions. The first Benidorm Fest was won by
Chanel with "
SloMo", which finished in third place at Eurovision with 459 points, thereby achieving Spain's best Eurovision result since 1995. == Interrupted performances ==