Chanel Terrero will be the representative of Spain in Eurovision 2022. With her theme SloMoI know has proclaimed the winner of the Benidorm Fest, the contest with which RTVE has chosen this year the singer and the song that will travel to Turin to represent Spain in the 66th edition of the European song festival, which will be held between the 10th and the May 14 in the Italian city.
Also an actress and dancer, experienced in the best musicals in Spain such as Nine or The Lion King, arrived in Spain at the age of three from his native Cuba. She did it out of love. But not his, but that of his mother, who moved with her partner to Olesa de Montserrat (Barcelona), a town of 23,000 inhabitants in which Terrero grew up.
“I practically come from another world. I promise to give Show in Eurovision to be first”, were his first words after winning the final of the gala broadcast by La 1 de Televisión Española. Later, at a press conference, the artist commented that with those words she was referring mainly to her career in musical theater.
She was not, far from it, among the favorites before starting this pre-selection, but her live performance in the semifinal last Wednesday made her chances skyrocket, compared to those favored by the public Rigoberta Bandini and Tanxugueiras, who have finished in second and third position, respectively.
Rayden, Varry Brava, Xeinn, Gonzalo Hermida (who was unable to participate live due to having tested positive for covid and both in the final and in the semifinal the official video of her song) and Blanca Paloma. The decision of the winner was made by a voting system that was divided 50/50 between a professional jury and the popular vote. The first was made up of Natalia Calderón, Miryan Benedited, Estefanía García, Marvin Dietmann and Félix Bargsson. As for the popular vote, it was distributed between 25% for a demographic jury, made up of a sample of 350 people representing the Spanish population, and 25% from televoting, with calls and SMS from the spectators of the gala.
Of the three juries, Chanel only prevailed in the professional vote, which gave her the maximum score (51 points). The division of the vote of her rivals in the other two juries allowed her to win. Tanxugueiras won in the two sections of the popular jury (30 votes in each case), but this was insufficient in the end. Chanel received a total of 96 votes, compared to 91 for Bandini and 90 for the Galician trio. The singer herself has not been able to avoid the joke that has been hanging around her for days: “Europe smells like Chanel”, she told the press, already at dawn. “There is nothing about this challenge that gives me vertigo.”
RTVE has received more than 1,000 messages per second in the minutes that it has kept the lines open, the organization of the festival has assured in the press conference after this final.
Right at the end of his intervention before the media, some of the attendees met the finalists of the night. First, they consoled Tanxugueiras and then spontaneously chanted Ay Mama when Rigoberta Bandini and her team left the venue.
little festival atmosphere
During the day of the Saturday before the final of the Benidorm Fest, there were few signs in the streets of the center of the Alicante city that indicated that, an hour later, the final of the Benidorm Fest was going to begin.
The musical ceremony was held at the Palau l’Illa, several kilometers away from the historic center, and the capacity of the venue was not very large for health reasons. There were approximately 1,300 seats, distributed almost equally between the stands and the pit. Many of them were occupied by the hundreds of participants -organisers, applicants and the media- around the ambitious television gala broadcast on TVE’s La 1. Access for eurofans was therefore restricted to the invitations that had been drawn by the public entity, the Benidorm City Council, the Generalitat Valenciana and some private companies.
In reality, few things can alter the very defined personality of the Alicante city, of chaotic and Mediterranean brutalism. In it, the cafeterias and shops close for the holidays in January, the night bars are hybrids between an Irish pub and a karaoke, and the electronic signs of some of its pharmacies mark the temperature in degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit, for an international community that , little by little, returns to Benidorm after the pandemic restrictions.
It is true that RTVE had occupied throughout this week one of the places most desired by locals and visitors, the Mirador del Castillo, which offers views of the coast, with the skyscrapers in the background. In that improvised venue, the 12 participants who have performed live on the Benidorm Fest stage spent these days for the cameras. Number 13, Gonzalo Hermida, has been locked up in his hotel for testing positive for covid since he arrived in the city. Luna Ki never became the 14th, because she freaked out just before it all started. She refused to give up auto tunethe technological tool that allows you to modulate your voice.
Miguel, one of the waiters who works in the cafeteria in front of this marquee of the organizing chain of the event, has noticed a little more movement at the tables of his large terrace since last Monday. “But here there is always a ruckus. It is that we have the best views of Benidorm, although I no longer appreciate them, seeing them every day. If any of the singers have taken something, I haven’t even found out, because I don’t know them, ”he said on Saturday morning behind the bar.
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