At the close of voting, four countries were declared joint-winners: theUnited Kingdom with "Boom Bang-a-Bang" byLulu,Spain with "Vivo cantando" bySalomé, theNetherlands with "De troubadour" byLenny Kuhr, andFrance with "Un jour, un enfant" byFrida Boccara. It was the first time in the history of the contest that a tie for first place had occurred, and since the rules in place at the time allowed more than one winner, all four countries were declared joint winners. France's win was its fourth, thus making it the first country to win the contest four times. The Netherlands' win was its third. Spain and the United Kingdom each won for the second time, with Spain becoming the first country to win the contest twice in a row.
The press room set up for the event, equipped with a giant colour screen, twelve television monitors,telex,teletype, andtelefax machines, telephones, one hundred typewriters with different keyboards, and translation services, was located within the building and had capacity for six hundred journalists.[3][4]
On 27 March 1969, theClub Internacional de Prensa hosted a cocktail reception at its Madrid facilities, presided over byManuel Fraga, theMinister of Information and Tourism on whom TVE depended at the time, and attended by all the participating artists, executives from the participating broadcasters, numerous accredited journalists, and local authorities.[5]
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Eurovision Song Contest 1969 – Participation summaries by country
Broadcasters from sixteen countries participated in the 1969 contest. Of the seventeen countries that participated in 1968 onlyAustria was absent,[6] officially becauseÖsterreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) could not find a suitable representative,[7] but it was rumoured that the broadcaster refused to participate in a contest staged inFranco-ruled Spain.[8]
The event was presented byLaurita Valenzuela, who was dressed for the occasion byCarmen Mir [es].[12] Thesurrealist artistSalvador Dalí designed the publicity material for the contest. The musical director wasAugusto Algueró, who made the arrangements and conducted the 52-piece orchestra during the opening and ending acts. The show opened with a rendition of theEurovision tune by theTeatro Real organ, followed by the orchestra performing the previous year's winning song, "La, la, la". The interval act consisted of a surrealist documentary titledLa España diferente, directed byJavier Aguirre, with music byLuis de Pablo. The show ended with the orchestra performing a medley of previous Eurovision winning songs during the credits.[13]
The event had a budget of around 5 millionpesetas (€30,050).[3] For the set built on theTeatro Real stage, the TVE scenography divisions in Madrid and Barcelona, headed by Bernardo Ballester, designed ten different proposals and built a scale model for each of them. These were shortlisted into three designs for further consideration, from which one was selected. The final design included the 5,000-pipe fixed organ already present at the back of the stage, a scoreboard on the side, a central steel sculpture created by surrealist artistAmadeo Gabino [es],[b] and fifteen thousand red and pink carnations. Since they were not allowed to make any modifications to the stage, not even hammering a nail into it, the set was prefabricated in more than three hundred modules that, brought fromPrado del Rey, were assembled on-site. For better visibility, the floor of the set was raised 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) above the stage.[14] TVE had full access to the concert hall starting from the evening of 16 March, immediately after the audience and staff of that day's regular season concert had left the venue, which allowed its stage crew to begin assembling the set right away, its technical crew to begin setting up the equipment afterwards, and the orchestra to start rehearsals on 22 March.[15]
This was the second contest to be filmed and transmitted in colour, even though TVE did not have the required colour equipment for such a big event at the time. It had to rent such equipment from the GermanARD, which was provided byFernseh and brought to Madrid from Cologne.[16] Five colour television cameras inside the concert hall, three of them mounted on cranes, were used to broadcast the event.[17] To avoid interruptions in the broadcast, the television signal was transmitted to the other broadcasters feeding theEurovision network by two simultaneous ways: via the terrestrial microwave relay link network through France, and via theIntelsat III F-2 satellite through Italy.[c][3] In addition, 137 dedicated telephone lines were used for transmission, internal communication, and communication with the participating broadcasters.[17] In Spain itself the broadcast was seen in black and white because the local transmitters did not support colour transmissions. The colour recording equipment did not arrive in Madrid on time, so TVE only had a black and white copy of the contest, until a colour copy was discovered in the archives ofNRK.[18]
It was the first time that the contest resulted in a tie for first place, with four entries each gaining 18 votes. Since the rules in place at the time allowed more than one winner,[d] all four countries were declared joint winnersex aequo.[e] This caused a problem concerning the medals that were to be distributed to the winners, as there were not enough to go round, so only the singers received their medals on stage;[6] the songwriters were not awarded theirs until later.[21] The medals were presented by previous year's winner Massiel, after which all four winning songs were reprised.
Each participating broadcaster appointed a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective jury via telephone. Known spokespersons at the 1969 contest are listed below.
Every participating broadcaster assembled a jury panel of ten people. Every jury member could give one vote to his or her favourite song, except that representing their own country.
Although neither spokesperson made any errors in their announcements, EBU scrutineerClifford Brown asked both the Spanish and the Monegasque spokespersons to repeat their votes. No adjustments were made to the scoring as a result of the repetition.
Each participating broadcaster was required to relay the contest live via its networks after receiving it through the Eurovision network. Non-participating EBU member broadcasters were also able to relay the contest as "passive participants". Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers.[31] In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in 26 countries including Tunisia; in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union received viaIntervision; and in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, and Puerto Rico.[10][32][33] 30 radio and television commentators are reported to be present at the contest,[34] with an estimated global audience of 250 to 400 million viewers.[35]
Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.
Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries
^On behalf of the German public broadcasting consortiumARD[11]
^TVE moved the sculpture, which is about 5 metres (16 ft) tall and weighs 350 kg (770 lb), to the garden at its premises inPrado del Rey after the contest, where it has remained ever since.
^In the dress rehearsal the night before, in which voting was also rehearsed with simulated votes, there had already been a tie for first place between Monaco and Luxembourg, both with 18 votes. EBU scrutineerClifford Brown declared them joint winners after consulting the rules and verifying that there could be more than one winner. Laurita Valenzuela concluded the rehearsal by bidding farewell until next year in Monaco and Luxembourg "at the same time".[19]
^Following protests from participating broadcasters after the four-way tie, a tiebreaker rule to determine a single winner was adopted for the first time in the1970 contest.[20]
^The connection between the commentary booth in Madrid and the NRK studios in Oslo was disabled partway through the broadcast, resulting in the Norwegian commentary provided bySverre Christophersen [no] not being relayed to Norwegian viewers and listeners. Commentary was temporarily provided byJanka Polanyi [no] before the Swedish feed was rerouted to also cover the Norwegian broadcasts, with the original connection to Christophersen ultimately fixed before the start of the voting sequence.[50]
^Deferred broadcast on TVE Canarias the following day at 22:35 (WET)[53]
^abcRoxburgh, Gordon (2012).Songs for Europe: The United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest. Volume One: The 1950s and 1960s. Prestatyn:Telos Publishing. pp. 482–493.ISBN978-1-84583-065-6.
^Janssens, Emiel (29 March 1969). "Drieluik Madrid, met een viertal kanshebbers naar het uur" [Triptych Madrid, with four contenders for the hour].Gazet van Antwerpen (in Dutch).Antwerp, Belgium.
^Thorsson, Leif; Verhage, Martin (2006).Melodifestivalen genom tiderna : de svenska uttagningarna och internationella finalerna (in Swedish). Stockholm: Premium Publishing. pp. 80–81.ISBN91-89136-29-2.
^Z. Kršlak (28 March 1969)."Девети покушај ЈРТ" [JRT's ninth attempt].Politika (in Serbo-Croatian (Cyrillic script)). Belgrade, Yugoslavia. p. 12. Retrieved5 August 2025 – viaArcanum Newspapers.
^ab"Radio ∗ Fjernsyn" [Radio ∗ Television].Østlands-Posten (in Norwegian).Larvik, Norway. 29 March 1969. p. 12. Retrieved3 January 2023 – via National Library of Norway.
^ab"Emisoras" [Stations].La Región (in Spanish).Ourense, Spain. 29 March 1969. p. 2. Retrieved2 July 2024 – viaGaliciana [gl](subscription may be required or content may be available in libraries).
^"as Radio 1 – BBC Radio 2".Radio Times. London, United Kingdom. 29 March 1969. Retrieved10 January 2023 – via BBC Genome Project.
^Roxburgh, Gordon (2014).Songs for Europe: The United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest. Volume Two: The 1970s. Prestatyn:Telos Publishing. pp. 370–372.ISBN978-1-84583-093-9.
^"TV – szombat III.29" [TV – Saturday III.29].Rádió– és Televízióújság (in Hungarian). Vol. 14, no. 13.Budapest, Hungary. 24 March 1969. p. 13. Retrieved15 February 2025 – via Nemzeti Archívum.
^Barry, Fred (29 March 1969). "Europe Ready for Song Finals Tonight – Maltese viewers' eyes on British, Italian entries".Times of Malta. Birkirkara, Malta. p. 19.
