Benidorm Fest: unknowns, doubts and suspicions about the professional jury and the voting system



The controversial voting system of the benidorm fest decided by RTVEwith a trinity formed by a professional juryone demoscopic and one popular, had the apparent objective of eluding old trolls like the one promoted by the production company El Terrat and Andreu Buenafuente in 2008, ended with the election of comedian David Fernández as Rodolfo Chikilicuatre; or the one that in 2010, and agitated from the Forocoches website, put the rapper and ex-convict John Cobra at the very gates of the festival.

It was, therefore, about minimize the weight of the televote, it was not going to be that the common people returned to take the thing to pitorreo or something worse. To avoid this, he placed the main weight of the vote on a professional jury, made up of experts from the music business and Eurovision, and it was that disproportionate weight, of 50%, by only 25% of the demographic jury and 25% of the popular, the one who ended up deciding the controversial triumph in Benidorm of 'SloMo', by Chanel, breaking the passionate forecasts that, at street level, almost a matter of state, they considered as absolute favorites 'Oh mom', from Rigoberta Bandiniand 'Terra', from Tanxugueiras. From the 'freak' joke to militant disenchantment.

In any case, appealing to the figure of Chikilicuatre is cheating, because between the 13 finalists of the Benidorm Fest (chosen from among 886 pre-candidates) there was no parodic or unwanted proposal, but 13 songs, some of them excellent, of all sorts of styles: from electropop by Javiera Mena to rap-copla by Rayden, from the new age balladism of Blanca Paloma to the retro-disco Varry Brava, from the feminist pop of Rigoberta Bandini to the European Chanel. So, Why so much fear in Benidorm of popular televoting? Its low weight, rather the excessive vote of the professional jury, has been one of the main reasons for the angry indignation that, in networks and life in general, has led to talk of “tongazo”, “pucherazo” and “trilerismo” when choosing a solvent but laboratory proposal like Chanel's, ruling out two formidable icons of a certain women's revolution like Rigoberta and the Tanxu. Denouncing, in short, that the decision of Chanel's final victory would already be marked, or almost, since before the first semifinal on Wednesday and that the rest of the racket was a heartbreaking eurodrama for an audience that believed, in vain, that another Spain, another song, was possible.

things have not gone well

The fact that the professional jury has entered the swampy terrain of politics, with parliamentary questions about its method of election, or the assumption by RTVE of the need for changes in future editions of the Benidorm Fest, certify that the thing, Despite the supposed initial good will, it has not ended well. From the first night it was clear that the professional jurymade up of experts Natalia Calderón (singer, actress and vocal coach), Miryam Benedited (choreographer), Estefanía García (coordinator of the RTVE Orchestra and Choir), Marvin Dietmann (set designer) and Felix Bergsson (head of the Icelandic delegation in Eurovision), was going to be decisive. Suddenly they broke the deck and left the big favorites, Tanxugueiras, out of the final, who had to be rescued by televoting; and, at the same time, propelled an astral leadership to Chanel, to popular surprise, Well, I knew little or nothing about the young Catalan artist of Cuban origin.

Those suspects 21 points

In the second semifinal there were no surprises, because the professional jury awarded its maximum number of votes, here yes, to the other favorite, Rigoberta Bandini, the same as the televote would do. There were only three possible winners left for the final: Chanel, Rigoberta Bandini and Tanxugueiras. The formidable success of the Galician trio in the two disciplines of the popular vote of their semifinal foreshadowed that in the final they would take the 60 points at stake, which would put them back in the game. But the professional jury, like the first night, turned its back on them again: fifth classified, with only 30 points, 21 points less than Chanel, absolute apple of his eye. And those 21 points are, for the always active friends of conspiracy, the key to everything. Let's explain the plot of the alleged plot: in the worst case, and given the precedents of the semifinals, Chanel would be third in the total of the two disciplines of the popular vote, which would add 40 points, that is, 20 points less than the Tanxu. The fact that the 'pro' jury separated them from the start by 21 points gave Chanel the victory, no matter what happened next. Eyes narrowed in suspicion. Is something weird going on here?

And Rigoberta Bandini? Its defeat was signed by the vote of the demographic jury, that opaque entity made up of 350 people chosen by RTVE as a representative of Spanish society, which in the second semifinal already relegated it to second position behind, um, Gonzalo Hermida. In the final, that same jury left her in third place behind the Tanxu and Chanel, and since it seemed clear that televoting was the territory of the Galicians, it was clear that the die was cast.

The total number of votes

Another question remains floating in the air: How many votes did Tanxugueiras, Chanel and Rigoberta receive from the call or the (old) SMS? It doesn't matter if the difference between them was tens, hundreds or thousands, because in the end it all came down to awarding 30 points to the first, 25 to the second and 20 to the third. In that sense, the real value of a popular vote was reduced to the infinitesimal in comparison with that of each of the five experts of the professional jury; his weight in gold. In this case, the golden ticket to Turin and Eurovision-2022.



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