Country:	:	Spain
City	:	Madrid
Date	:	Saturday 29 March 1969
Location	:	Teatro Real, Madrid, Spain
Broadcaster	:	TVE
Host	:	Laurita Valenzuela
EBU Scrutineer	:	Clifford Brown
Director	:	Ramon Diaz
Winner(s)	:	Salomé from Spain Lulu from United Kingdom Lenny Kuhr from The Netherlands Frida Boccara from France
Interval Act	:	La España diferente

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 1968 contest 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 Saturday 29 March 1969 and was hosted by Spanish television presenter and actress Laurita Valenzuela.

Sixteen countries took part in the contest with Austria deciding not to participate this year.

At the close of voting, four countries were controversially declared joint-winners: the United Kingdom with „Boom Bang-a-Bang“ by Lulu, Spain with „Vivo cantando“ by Salomé, the Netherlands with „De troubadour“ by Lenny Kuhr, and France with „Un jour, un enfant“ by Frida Boccara. It was the first time in the history of the contest that a tie 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 their fourth, thus making it the first country to win the contest four times. The Netherlands‘ win was their third. Spain and the United Kingdom each won for the second time, with Spain becoming the first country to win the Eurovision Song Contest twice in a row.

Location

The venue selected to host the 1969 contest was the Teatro Real, an opera house located in Madrid. The theatre reopened in 1966 as a concert theatre and the main concert venue of the Spanish National Orchestra and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra. The stage featured a metal sculpture created by surrealist Spanish artist Amadeo Gabino.

Format
The surrealist Spanish artist Salvador Dalí was responsible for designing the publicity material for the 1969 contest, resulting in very unusual publicity material for the contest, although very fitting with the times.

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. It was the second contest to be filmed and transmitted in colour, even though TVE did not have colour equipment at the time. It had to rent colour TV cameras from the ARD German network. In Spain itself the broadcast was seen in black and white because the local transmitters did not support colour transmissions. The equipment for archiving the broadcast 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 the NRK.

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 United Kingdom.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who led the orchestra. These are listed below.

•  Yugoslavia – Miljenko Prohaska
•  Luxembourg – Augusto Algueró
•  Spain – Augusto Algueró
•  Monaco – Hervé Roy
•  Ireland – Noel Kelehan
•  Italy – Ezio Leoni
•  United Kingdom – Johnny Harris
•  Netherlands – Frans de Kok
•  Sweden – Lars Samuelson
•  Belgium – Francis Bay
•   Switzerland – Henry Mayer
•  Norway – Øivind Bergh
•  Germany – Hans Blum
•  France – Franck Pourcel
•  Portugal – Ferrer Trindade
•  Finland – Ossi Runne

Returning artists

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Siw Malmkvist	Germany	1960 (for  Sweden)
Romuald	Luxembourg	1964 (for  Monaco)
Simone de Oliveira	Portugal	1965
Kirsti Sparboe	Norway	1965, 1967
Louis Neefs	Belgium	1967

The Participants

#	Representing country	Performer(s)	Song title, writer(s) and composer(s)	Points	Place
01	YugoslaviaJRT	Ivan	Pozdrav Svijetu	005	13
02	LuxembourgCLT	Romuald	Cathérine	007	11
03	SpainTVE	Salomé	Vivo Cantando	018	01
04	MonacoTMC	Jean-Jacques	Maman, Maman	011	06
05	IrelandRTÉ	Muriel Day and the Lindsays	The Wages Of Love	010	07
06	ItalyRAI	Iva Zanicchi	Due Grosse Lacrime Bianche	005	13
07	United KingdomBBC	Lulu	Boom Bang-a-bang	018	01
08	The NetherlandsNTS	Lenny Kuhr	De Troubadour	018	01
09	SwedenSR	Tommy Körberg	Judy, Min Vän	008	09
10	BelgiumBRT	Louis Neefs	Jennifer Jennings	010	07
11	SwitzerlandSSR SRG	Paola del Medico	Bonjour, Bonjour	013	05
12	NorwayNRK	Kirsti Sparboe	Oj, Oj, Oj, Så Glad, Jeg Skal Bli	001	16
13	GermanyARD	Siw Malmkvist	Primaballerina	008	09
14	FranceORTF	Frida Boccara	Un Jour, Un Enfant	018	01
15	PortugalRTP	Simone de Oliveira	Desfolhada Portuguesa	004	15
16	FinlandYLE	Jarkko and Laura	Kuin Silloin Ennen	006

Scoreboard

Although neither jury made any errors in their announcements, scrutineer Clifford Brown asked both the Spanish and the Monegasque juries to repeat their scores. No adjustments were made to the scoring as a result of the repetition.

Participant																	Points	Place
Yugoslavia	1									3	1						5	13
Luxembourg	1			1				3						1		1	7	11
Spain	3		2	3	1		2	3	1	2						1	18	1
Monaco	1					4					2	2		2			11	6
Ireland		3		1								1	3	1	1		10	7
Italy		1			1			1		1						1	5	13
United Kingdom		1		1		3	4			1		5		1		2	18	1
The Netherlands	1		6			3	2	1	1				4				18	1
Sweden		3							3	1				1			8	9
Belgium									2		2		2	1	3		10	7
Switzerland	1	2		2	3				1						2	2	13	5
Norway												1					1	16
Germany	1		1						1		2					3	8	9
France				1	4		1	2		2		1	1	2	4		18	1
Portugal	1		1								2						4	15
Finland				1	1		1		1		1			1			6	12