The Eurovision Song Contest 1969 was the 14th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Madrid, Spain, following the country's victory at the with the song "La La La" by Massiel. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Televisión Española (TVE), the contest was held at the Teatro Real on 29 March 1969 and was hosted by Spanish television presenter and actress Laurita Valenzuela. Sixteen countries took part in the contest with deciding not to participate this year. At the close of voting, four countries were declared joint-winners: the with "Boom Bang-a-Bang" by Lulu, with "Vivo cantando" by Salomé, the with "De troubadour" by Lenny Kuhr, and with "Un jour, un enfant" by Frida Boccara. It was the first time in the history of the contest that a tie for first place had occurred, and as there was no tiebreaker rule in place at the time, 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.

Location

The venue selected to host the 1969 contest was the Teatro Real, an opera house located in Madrid opened in 1850. After having to close in 1924 due to damage to the building, the venue reopened in 1966 as a concert hall and the main concert venue of the Spanish National Orchestra and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra.

Participating countries

Austria was absent from the contest, officially because they could not find a suitable representative, but it was rumoured that they refused to participate in a contest staged in Franco-ruled Spain. Wales wanted to debut with Welsh language broadcaster BBC Cymru, and also made a national selection called Cân i Gymru, but in the end it was decided they would not participate in the competition – their participation was rejected because Wales is not a sovereign state. Only the BBC has the exclusive right to represent the. Five performers who had competed in previous editions of the contest featured among the participating artists at this year's event: Siw Malmkvist representing had represented ; Romuald representing had represented ; Simone de Oliveira representing had represented the country ; Kirsti Sparboe representing had represented the country and ; and Louis Neefs representing had represented the country.

Format

The surrealist artist Salvador Dalí designed the publicity material for the contest. The stage featured a metal sculpture created by surrealist artist Amadeo Gabino. The musical director of the event was Augusto Algueró, who made the arrangements and conducted the orchestra during the opening and ending acts. The show opened with a rendition of the Eurovision tune by the Teatro Real organ, followed by the orchestra performing the previous year's winning song, "La, la, la". The interval act consisted of a surrealist documentary titled La España diferente, directed by Javier Aguirre, with music by Luis de Pablo. The show ended with the orchestra performing a medley of previous Eurovision winning songs during the credits. 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. It had to rent colour television cameras from the ARD German network, which was provided by Fernseh and brought to Madrid from Cologne. 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 time, so TVE only had a black and white copy of the contest, until a colour copy was discovered in the archives of NRK. It was the first time that the contest resulted in a tie for first place, with four countries each gaining 18 votes. Since there was at the time no rule to cover such an eventuality, all four countries were declared joint winners. This caused an unfortunate problem concerning the medals due to be distributed to the winners as there were not enough to go round, so that only the singers received their medals on the night: the songwriters, to some disgruntlement, were not awarded theirs until some days later. The medals were presented by previous year's winner, Massiel.

Contest overview

Spokespersons

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.

Detailed voting results

Every participating broadcaster assembled a jury panel of ten people. Every jury member could give one point to his or her favourite song, except that representing their own country. Although neither spokesperson made any errors in their announcements, scrutineer Clifford Brown asked both the Spanish and the Monegasque spokespersons to repeat their scores. No adjustments were made to the scoring as a result of the repetition.

Broadcasts

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. Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in 26 countries including Tunisia; in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union received via Intervision; and in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, and Puerto Rico received via satellite.