Hello welcome to my series of quick takes designed to get you ready for Eurovision 2019. Just some quick thoughts / my take on each of the 41 songs this year. The countries are in alphabetical order so without further ado: Spain.

Country: Spain
Singer: Miki
Song: La Venda
Personal Score: 20 out of 41
My Prediction: Auto Qualifier

Secretly hate how much I don’t entirely hate this song. This song is basically like if you sat someone down and asked them to write the most hyperbolic song about the sterotypes of Spain. The weird part is that it kind of works. At first you just laugh at it but Miki has a real effortless kind of charm and the chorus is just so catchy and easy to sing. There’s a danger in singing in not-English which is that your audience won’t understand your message if you speak your own language very complexly and since you can’t vote for your own country this can be a real harm if the language politics of your country also mean that your language is seen as “bad” or “other”. Spanish doesn’t quite have those markers on it but keeping this song to very simple, easy to understand and easy to replicate phrases means that they’ve bypassed those barriers all together and made a song everyone can yell.

This is going to sound mean but stick with me. This song is “Do It For Your Lover” but in Spanish. The thing is if you listen to “Do It For Your Lover” you’ll come out the other side being able to sing that one phrase. It’s a good trick. Everyone can sing that part. In the same way many Eurovision songs include whistles, clapping, odd noises, etc. to universally draw people in, its just that Do It For Your Lover did it clumsily and alienated its audience in both tone and attitude of the performers where La Venda does it by telling everyone to dance and celebrate. Honestly, not a bad showing for Spain and probably would qualify even if they weren’t in the Big 5. (Reminds me a bit of What’s the Pressure from Belgium, might end up opening the final if the cards fall right).