Una Fiesta: Bringing the Sounds of Spain to Eurovision 2019

In my previous blog post, and through further research, I summarized Spain’s national identity as mainly influenced by its history, religion, and language. In this blog post, I will be exploring the extent to which those elements are present in Spain’s 2019 performance at Eurovision in Tel Aviv, Israel.

“La Venda”

Spain’s 2019 Eurovision entry “La Venda”, by artist Miki Núñez, is an upbeat party anthem that will surely make you want to dance along to the beat of the music. “La Venda” which translates to “The Blindfold” in English is a song about leaving prejudice behind and embracing the beautiful life that comes after that (Fuster, 2019). The theme/slogan for the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was “Dare to Dream”, celebrating inclusion, unity, and diversity making “La Venda” a fitting entry for that year’s Eurovision Song Contest (EBU, n.d.). In previous years, most of Spain’s ESC entries have mostly been sung in Spanish, Spain’s national language, so for Miki (a native of Spain) it was only natural for him to continue that pattern of having a song in Spanish at the ESC. Spain sets itself apart in the ESC as being one of the only entries to be in Spanish. With 74% of their population speaking Spanish, singing in Spanish reflects their county’s demographics. (CIA World Factbook, 2022). Miki’s 2019 ESC performance aligns with the language aspect of Spain’s national identity making it very much a performance in what one might associate with Spain.

Born in Terrassa, Spain (near Barcelona) in the Catalan region, it was only natural for Miki to represent Spain in the ESC (Escudero, 2019). Miki is “73.4% Iberian and 10.7% Sardinian, but get this--he's also 7.6% North African, 7.4% Scandinavian, and 0.9% Nigerian” (Escudero, 2019), making him ethnically a fair representative of the population of Spain which consists of “Spanish 84.8%, Moroccan 1.7%, Romanian 1.2%, other 12.3%” (CIA World Factbook, 2019). Spain’s 2019 ESC performance does not stop short in showcasing the culture and language of Miki’s identity. La Venda, the song Miki chose to perform at the 2019 ESC, is a bright, uplifting, and energetic number in which elements of Catalan rumba and Latin percussion are present throughout the song to create this danceable quality to his song and performance. In addition to that, Miki took inspiration from other musical genres such as soul, ska, reggae, and Latin pop which can be heard and felt throughout his performance (EBU, n.d.)

One of Miki’s objectives or visions for the performance was to represent the energy and joy of the Spanish people. He certainly has achieved this through the music and lyrics of the song, dance choreography, visuals and staging of the performance, and the energy being brought to the song and performance all together. For the music and the lyrics, the warm horn arrangements along with the beat of the Latin percussion propel the audience to clap and dance along to the song further increasing the energy of the song. The lyrics are meant to be uplifting and encouraging as Miki calls on people to take off the blindfold (la venda) which is analogous for prejudice in the song. When we are blinded or can’t see we can often subject others to prejudice such as racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and other kinds of prejudice, but when we do take the blindfold off and when there is no prejudice, there will be joy, happiness, and life will be a beautiful life after that as the lyrics suggest (Fuster, 2019).

For the dance choreography, the backing dancers for the most part had a synchronized routine that displayed the energy of the song as well as encouraged the audience to participate and join in with them as the dance moves were simple and repetitive enough for everybody to learn throughout the performance. For the staging and visual effects of the performance, it was a memorable performance to some degree as it contained a few aspects of what make up a novelty song, played into various Eurovision tropes, as well as contained elements that were unique to their performance. The two criteria that the “La Venda” performance met in terms of novelty songs were presentational gimmicks and being about something other than love (Chalkley, 2017). For presentational gimmick, it is hard to miss or not remember Spain’s performance because of how bright and colourful the backing visuals are with all the neon-coloured powder explosions as well as the prop of a makeshift home/apartment which really played into the brightness and energetic nature of the song. Throughout the performance, various Eurovision tropes popped up such as strobe lighting, swirling camera shot, the artist in all black clothing, rhythmic clapping, and synchronized dance routine. Some of the other visual and staging elements included a home/apartment prop that represents the daily routine of our lives which was accompanied with solid coloured backing screens to possibly represent plainness and mundanity, but when Miki sings the chorus which begins with “La venda ya cayó” colourful neon powder explosions occur and the energy of the song transforms throughout the stage as the dancers are more energetic and lively to represent that freedom without the blindfold. There also appears to be a glow-up puppet that is meant to represent people being “trapped in the kind of society that alienates them” (Escudero, 2019) which didn’t quite make sense in the performance and was most likely not paid much attention towards during the performance with everything else going on in terms of the dancing and colourful backing visuals. Lastly, the visual of the fingerprint is meant to represent our unique identity as our fingerprints are all unique which ties into the message of Miki’s song about being yourself and ditching the prejudice. As for the energy of the performance, it did not stop short of it in the performance. Towards the end of the performance, when the lyrics go “Lo que ere” which means what you really are, the backing screen changed to a live shot of the audience which was an invitation to them to join them at the party in which the audience gladly partook in (Escudero, 2019).

In my previous blog post and through further research, the elements that I had identified which influenced Spain’s national identity were mainly religion, history, and language. Elements of religion and history were not present in Miki’s performance, but the language aspect of Spain’s national identity was present in his performance. For Spain, it is important for them to send a Spanish artist to the ESC and to do the performance in Spanish, because to see their own language being sung at an international competition is a sense of pride for them. Languages are important for a nation’s national identity because it allows for its members to communicate with each other better and more easily. The reason why a language is important to the national identity of a nation is the opposite reason why many countries choose to sing in English at Eurovision. Most songs at Eurovision are sung in English due to a variety of reasons such as, understanding by large numbers of viewers, English is seen as a neutral language, and English-language songs win more often in hopes that it can reach a wider audience (John, 2018). If you were to look at Spain’s 2019 ESC performance, there is no mistaking that the performance represents Spain, and it is probably the main reason why Spain has chosen to sing in Spanish at Eurovision for many years. In this sense, Spain’s 2019 ESC performance has aligned itself with the language aspect of Spain’s national identity fairly well.

Spain’s 2019 ESC performance is a particularly good example of essentialism and simulation within the smaller concept of the “tourist gaze” (Baker, 2008, p. 181). According to Baker (2008), the tourist gaze is “where tourists’ expectations about the foreign destination are ‘constructed through difference’ to their everyday routines” (p. 181). Spain’s 2019 ESC performance plays with elements that Baker discusses in her article on the concept of the “tourist gaze” in that Spain’s entries “often draw on the representational strategies of commercially successful Latin pop music, such as bright colors, rhythmic music, and brown or olive skin” (Baker, 2008, p. 181). Miki’s performance featured bright colours in the backing visuals and rhythmic music, and the song itself could be considered as a Latin pop song to many viewers. In some ways, these aspects align with parts of the cultural elements of Spain’s national identity and in others not so much. The few aspects that do align partially with Spain’s culture are the colours and the music from which Miki drew inspiration from the Catalan rumba which is native to the region from which he is from. The party culture elements, however, do not entirely reflect Spain’s culture as Spain’s 17 autonomous regions each have their own distinct qualities and traditions. The performance fits into the tropes of Spain as this fun, energetic Mediterranean party culture song and the performance relates to Baker’s argument in how much of what is presented in performances like this is what people associate with Spain and other Mediterranean regions which is being simulated on the basis of a constructed image (Baker, 2008, p. 182). The idea of a warm, sunny, and colourful Spain in the context of Spain’s 2019 ESC performance is the reproduction of the idea of Spain, that never existed in the first place. (Baker, 2008, p. 174) This demonstrates how certain elements of Spain’s ESC performance aligns and misaligns with the culture aspect of Spain’s national identity.

Overall, Spain’s 2019 ESC Performance, “La Venda”, aligns with the language element of Spain’s national identity as being the only country in Europe that has Spanish as its national language. The upbeat, energetic, and colourful nature of the song certainly brings the fiesta of Spain to the Eurovision stage.

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References

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Eurovision Song Contest. Popular Communication, 6(3), 173-189.

https://doi.org/10.1080/15405700802198113

Central Intelligence Agency. (2022). Spain. In CIA World Factbook. Retrieved February 21, 2022, from

www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/spain/

EBU. (n.d.). Miki. EBU. https://eurovision.tv/participant/miki

Estradno nebo. (24 May, 2019). Spain live Miki La Venda grand final Eurovision 2019. dailymotion.

Escudero, V. (2019, April 05). Eurovision class of 2019: this year's languages. EBU.

https://eurovision.tv/story/eurovision-class-of-2019-languages

Escudero, V. (2019, May 10). Spain's Miki lifts the lid on the staging of 'La Venda'. EBU.

https://eurovision.tv/story/spains-miki-lifts-lid-on-the-staging-of-la-venda

Fuster, L. (2019, March 17). Miki’s “La venda” lyrics call on us to remove the “blindfold” of

prejudice. wiwibloggs. https://wiwibloggs.com/2019/03/17/la-venda-lyrics-translation-miki-

spain/234982/

John. (2018, April 16). National languages and the rise of English at Eurovision. John the Go.

https://www.johnthego.com/2018/04/16/rise-english-use-national-languages-eurovision/