The Eurovision Song Contest isn’t the only pan-nation festival of popular song out there. It was the first, but it has spawned a number of others, with others in the pipeline all the time. If you’re of Hispanic origin, you may know of the OTI Festival, that ran between 1972 and 2000.
There has been a degree of crossover between ESC and OTI, and a number of stars have seen success. One of those is today’s birthday boy Marcos Gómez Llunas. He did better at OTI, winning it in 1995 in exotic Paraguay. On that success, he got the gig in Dublin in 1997. Marcos didn’t do that badly with his self-penned song. Maybe if he’d had a slightly better fitting suit, he would have finished better than sixth. One thing he can take comfort in is no Spanish song has finished better than sixth since his time on that stage.
Marcos is 50 today.
Feliz cumpleaños, Marcos!