Eurovision Song Contest 1969


The Eurovision Song Contest 1969 was the 14th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest.
Four countries won the contest, the first time ever a tie had occurred. However, there was no rule at the time to cover such an eventuality, so all four countries were declared joint winners.
France's win was their fourth, thus making it the first country to win the contest four times. The Netherlands' win was their third. Spain and the United Kingdom each won for the second time. And it was the first time that any country had a winning ESC entry two years in a row. This is so far the only occasion Spain has hosted the contest, as well as their last win to date.

Location

The venue selected to host the 1969 contest was the Teatro Real, an opera house located in Madrid. The theatre reopened in 1966 as a concert theatre and the main concert venue of the Spanish National Orchestra and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra. The final featured an onstage metal sculpture created by surrealist Spanish artist, Amadeo Gabino.

Format

The surrealist Spanish artist Salvador Dalí was responsible for designing the publicity material for the 1969 contest.
It was the first time that the contest resulted in a tie for first place, with four countries each gaining 18 votes. Since there was at the time no rule to cover such an eventuality, all four countries were declared joint winners. This caused an unfortunate problem concerning the medals due to be distributed to the winners as there were not enough to go round, so that only the singers received their medals on the night: the songwriters, to some disgruntlement, were not awarded theirs until after the date of the contest.

Participating countries

was absent from the contest, officially because they could not find a suitable representative, but it was rumoured that they refused to participate in a contest staged in Franco-ruled Spain. Wales wanted to debut with Welsh language broadcaster BBC Cymru, and also made a national selection called Cân i Gymru, but in the end it was decided they would not participate in the competition – their participation was rejected because Wales is not a sovereign state. Only the BBC has the exclusive right to represent the United Kingdom.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who led the orchestra. These are listed below.
Five artists returned in this year's contest. Louis Neefs for Belgium who last represented the nation in 1967; Germany's Siw Malmkvist who was also the participant for Sweden in 1960. Romuald for Luxembourg who represented Monaco last time in 1964; Norway's Kirsti Sparboe who represented the Scandinavian nation twice before in 1965 and 1967; and finally Simone de Oliveira who also represented Portugal in 1965.

Results

Scoreboard

Although neither jury made any errors in their announcements, scrutineer Clifford Brown asked both the Spanish and the Monegasque juries to repeat their scores. No adjustments were made to the scoring as a result of the repetition.

Broadcasters, commentators and spokespersons

Spokespersons

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1969 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.
  1. –
  2. – TBC
  3. – Ramón Rivera
  4. – TBC
  5. – John Skehan
  6. – Mike Bongiorno
  7. – Colin Ward-Lewis
  8. –
  9. –
  10. – Eugène Senelle
  11. –
  12. –
  13. –
  14. –
  15. – Maria Manuela Furtado
  16. –

    Broadcasters and commentators

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language.