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The Eurovision Song Contest 1968 was the 13th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in London, United Kingdom, following the country's first victory at the 1967 contest with the song "Puppet on a String" by Sandie Shaw. Despite having won for the first time the year before, it was actually the third time that the United Kingdom had hosted the competition, having previously done so in 1960 and 1963, both of which also took place in London. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the contest was held at Royal Albert Hall on 6 April 1968, and was hosted by Katie Boyle for the third time. It was notably also the first time that the contest was broadcast in colour.

Eurovision Song Contest 1968
Dates
Final	6 April 1968
Host
Venue	Royal Albert Hall London, United Kingdom
Presenter(s)	Katie Boyle
Musical director	Norrie Paramor
Directed by	Stewart Morris
Executive supervisor	Clifford Brown
Executive producer	Tom Sloan
Host broadcaster	British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
Interval act	Impressions from London
Website	eurovision.tv/event/london-1968
Participants
Number of entries	17
Debuting countries	None
Returning countries	None
Non-returning countries	None
Participation map      Participating countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1968
Vote
Voting system	Ten-member juries distributed ten points among their favourite songs.
Nul points in final	None
Winning song	Spain "La, la, la"
1967 ← Eurovision Song Contest → 1969

Seventeen countries participated in the contest, the same countries that had participated the previous year.

The winner was Spain with the song "La, la, la" by Massiel, and written/composed by Manuel de la Calva and Ramón Arcusa. This was Spain's first victory - and their first ever top five placing - in the contest. With her winning reprise, she became the first winner to perform part of her song in English, in addition to the original version.

Location

The contest was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The Royal Albert Hall is known for hosting the world's leading artists from several performance genres, sports, award ceremonies, the annual summer Proms concerts and other events since its opening in 1871, and has become one of the United Kingdom's most treasured and distinctive buildings.

Format

1968 was the first time that the Eurovision Song Contest was broadcast in colour. The countries that broadcast it in colour were France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, although in the UK it was broadcast as an encore presentation in colour on BBC Two the next day. All of Eastern Europe as well as Tunisia broadcast the contest as well.

Prior to the contest, the bookmakers were sure of another British victory, as the English singer Cliff Richard, who was already dominating the music charts at that time, was hotly tipped as the favourite to win, but in the end he lost out to Spain's song by a margin of just one point.

Originally Massiel's song La La La was supposed to be sung by Spanish singer Joan Manuel Serrat who wanted to perform the song in Catalan. At the request of Spanish officials, however, Juan Manuel was replaced by Massiel who sang the same song in Castilian (Spanish).

Participating countries

All countries that had participated in 1967 also participated in 1968.[1]

Conductors

Each performance had a maestro who conducted the orchestra.[2][3]

Returning artists

Bold indicates a previous winner.

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Isabelle Aubret	France	1962

Participants and results

R/O	Country	Artist	Song	Language[4][5]	Points	Place[6]
1	Portugal	Carlos Mendes	"Verão"	Portuguese	5	11
2	Netherlands	Ronnie Tober	"Morgen"	Dutch	1	16
3	Belgium	Claude Lombard	"Quand tu reviendras"	French	8	7
4	Austria	Karel Gott	"Tausend Fenster"	German	2	13
5	Luxembourg	Chris Baldo and Sophie Garel	"Nous vivrons d'amour"	French	5	11
6	Switzerland	Gianni Mascolo	"Guardando il sole"	Italian	2	13
7	Monaco	Line and Willy	"À chacun sa chanson"	French	8	7
8	Sweden	Claes-Göran Hederström	"Det börjar verka kärlek, banne mig"	Swedish	15	5
9	Finland	Kristina Hautala	"Kun kello käy"	Finnish	1	16
10	France	Isabelle Aubret	"La source"	French	20	3
11	Italy	Sergio Endrigo	"Marianne"	Italian	7	10
12	United Kingdom	Cliff Richard	"Congratulations"	English	28	2
13	Norway	Odd Børre	"Stress"	Norwegian	2	13
14	Ireland	Pat McGeegan	"Chance of a Lifetime"	English	18	4
15	Spain	Massiel	"La, la, la"	Spanish	29	1
16	Germany	Wencke Myrhe	"Ein Hoch der Liebe"	German	11	6
17	Yugoslavia	Luci Capurso and Hamo Hajdarhodžić	"Jedan dan" (Један дан)	Serbo-Croatian	8	7

Detailed voting results

Due to a misunderstanding by the hostess, Katie Boyle, Switzerland were erroneously awarded 3 points by Yugoslavia, instead of 2. The scrutineer asked for the Yugoslav votes from TV Skopje to be announced a second time.

Detailed voting results[7][8]

		Total score	Portugal	Netherlands	Belgium	Austria	Luxembourg	Switzerland	Monaco	Sweden	Finland	France	Italy	United Kingdom	Norway	Ireland	Spain	Germany	Yugoslavia
Contestants	Portugal	5													2		3
	Netherlands	1											1
	Belgium	8	1								1	1	3	1			1
	Austria	2																2
	Luxembourg	5		1		1			1			1		1
	Switzerland	2																	2
	Monaco	8		2			1				3			1		1
	Sweden	15	1	1							1			2	6	4
	Finland	1													1
	France	20		3	6	2	3	3		1			2
	Italy	7	1					2									2		2
	United Kingdom	28	1	2	2		1	4	5	3	2	4	1			1		2
	Norway	2					1										1
	Ireland	18	1	1	1	4	1			4									6
	Spain	29	4			2	1		4		3	4	3		1	1		6
	Germany	11					1	1		2				5			2
	Yugoslavia	8	1		1	1	1									3	1

Spokespersons

This section needs additional citations for verification. (June 2021)

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1968 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.

Broadcasts

This section needs additional citations for verification. (June 2021)

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in Tunisia, and in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union via Intervision.[3]

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Austria	FS1	Willy Kralik [de]
Belgium	RTB	French: Paule Herreman
	BRT	Dutch: Herman Verelst [nl]
Finland	TV-ohjelma 1	Aarno Walli [fi]
France	Deuxième Chaîne ORTF	Pierre Tchernia
Germany	Deutsches Fernsehen	Hans-Joachim Rauschenbach [de]
Ireland	RTÉ	Brendan O'Reilly
	RTÉ Radio	Kevin Roche
Italy	Secondo Programma	Renato Tagliani [it]
Luxembourg	Télé-Luxembourg	Jacques Navadic
Monaco	Télé Monte Carlo	Pierre Tchernia
Netherlands	Nederland 1	Elles Berger [nl]
Norway	NRK	Roald Øyen
Portugal	RTP	Fialho Gouveia
Spain	Primera Cadena	Federico Gallo [es]
	Radio Nacional	José María Íñigo	[10]
Sweden	Sveriges TV	Christina Hansegård [sv]	[11]
Switzerland	TV DRS	German: Theodor Haller [de]
	TSR	French: Georges Hardy [fr]
	TSI	Italian: Giovanni Bertini
United Kingdom	BBC1	No commentary	[3]
	BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2	Pete Murray	[3]
Yugoslavia	Televizija Beograd	Serbo-Croatian: Miloje Orlović [sr]
	Televizija Zagreb	Serbo-Croatian: Mladen Delić
	Televizija Ljubljana	Slovene: Tomaž Terček [sl]

Incidents

Spanish artist replacement

Originally Spain entered Joan Manuel Serrat to sing "La, la, la", but his demand to sing in Catalan was an affront to the Francoist State dictatorship. Therefore, Massiel, who was on tour in Mexico, was brought in as a late replacement. In just two weeks, she had to rush back to Spain, learn the song, record it in several languages, travel to Paris to get a dress and go to London for rehearsals. She sang the song in the contest in Spanish with the new arrangement made to fit her. In her winning reprise, she performed part of her song in English, in addition to the original version, becoming the first winner to do so.[1][12]

Vote rigging allegations

In May 2008, a documentary by Spanish film-maker Montse Fernández Villa, 1968. Yo viví el mayo español, centred on the effects of May 1968 in Francoist Spain,[13] and alleged that the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest was rigged by the Spanish caudillo Francisco Franco, who would have sent state television officials across Europe offering cash and promising to buy television series and contract unknown artists.[14] The allegation was based on a testimony by journalist José María Íñigo, a TVE employee at the time, who claimed the rigging was common knowledge and suggested that Spanish record label representatives offered to release albums by Bulgarian and Czech artists (neither Bulgaria nor Czechoslovakia were members of the European Broadcasting Union at the time, though in the 1968 contest, Austria was represented by Karel Gott, who was from Czechoslovakia.).[15]

The documentary claimed that the contest should in fact have been won by the United Kingdom's entry – "Congratulations" performed by Cliff Richard – which finished second by one vote.[16] Massiel, the performer of the winning entry, was outraged by the allegations, and claimed that if there had been fixes, "other singers, who were more keen on Francoist Spain, would have benefited". José María Iñigo, author of the statement in the documentary, personally apologized to Massiel and said that he had repeated a widespread rumour. Both Massiel and Iñigo accused television channel La Sexta, broadcaster of the documentary, of manufacturing the scandal.[17]

References

External links

• Official website

На других языках

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- [en] Eurovision Song Contest 1968

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[ru] Евровидение-1968

Конкурс песни Евровидение 1968 — 13-й конкурс песни «Евровидение». Он прошёл 6 апреля 1968 года в Лондоне (Великобритания), в Альберт-холле, и был первым, транслировавшимся и записанным в цвете. Победу одержала Испания с песней «La, la, la» в исполнении певицы Массиель.

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