Are there any more passionate fans of Eurovision than the Spanish? Every year they get behind their entry with high expectations and unwavering gusto (unless the entrant is called Manel Navarro), but every year they’re thwarted when it comes to the points. Despite being a Big 5 they’ve been in the bottom 5 for most of the past decade and a half.
Hoping to change that is Miki, a bouncy chap whose muscly guns have garnered almost as much interest as his song in certain quarters of the interweb.
Miki took part in ‘Operacion Triunfo’, the revived talent show enjoying new success, that served us up the love birds Alfred and Amaia last year. (You’ll be unsurprised, reader, to hear they’re no longer together.) He only finished 6th, but the twist in Spain is that the winner isn’t the automatic Eurovision entrant; all participants sang a new original song the week after the final to select who should represent them. It’s one of this year’s high points for me, an uplifting party song that should be a huge crowd pleaser if they can recreate some of the energy of the national final. I wager we’ll see good use made of the stage catwalks, and possibly a bit of audience involvement.
Ostensibly, it’s a song about discovering you have all the potential you need within you once you realise, but many are suggesting, with Miki’s heritage, the chorus is a actually a veiled nod to Catalan independence with its allusion to new possibilities and fantasies of getting what you’ve always wanted once the blindfold falls and you can see it. There are readings of the posters in the video that offer visual nods to the tradition of political fly posting. If it is there, I’ve no particular view on either side of that issue, but I am a big fan of just how much fun Spain is bringing this year.
Monty’s score: Douze Points!