Spain participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 with an entry selected through a MySpace project called Salvemos Eurovisión (Let's Save Eurovision). The Spanish Final was held at TVE's Estudios Buñuel in Madrid on March 8, hosted by popular Italian actress and singer Raffaella Carrà. 10 songs participated in this televised final - five chosen by an "expert" jury and five chosen via internet voting between February 11-25th. The comedic act Rodolfo Chikilicuatre won the final by a landslide getting the highest possible amount of points, and thus participated for Spain in the Eurovision final in Belgrade. The winner was decided by televoting.

More than 530 songs were uploaded to the Salvemos Eurovisión MySpace platform to participate in the Spanish selection process. Out of these, ten acts proceeded to the televised final. The five acts qualified by online voting were comedic character Rodolfo Chikilicuatre (109,995 votes), indie-pop band La Casa Azul (67,706 votes), Latin-pop singer Arkaitz (63,460 votes), pop singer Coral (58,339 votes) and pop-rock band Bizarre (54,842 votes). The five acts chosen by the jury were pop duo Ell*as, metal band Null System, rap artist Marzok Mangui, R&B band D-Vine and pop singer Innata. Null System was later disqualified as their song, "Mourning", did not fulfill the rules, and they were replaced by electro-pop duo Lorena C.

The national final took place on March 8, 2008 at TVE's in Madrid, hosted by popular Italian actress and singer Raffaella Carrà. The ultimate winner was decided solely by televoting.

TVE decided to make the selection process "more democratic", so they created a Myspace platform where the general public could vote for any of the artists who was interested in participating, with the idea of discovering new talents. However, the online voting process was accused of being easily distorted, and the participation of comedic acts like Rodolfo Chikilicuatre, the eventual winner, who was promoted by a late night TV show, was also disputed.

Rodolfo Chikilicuatre is a fictional character played by David Fernández, a comedian who collaborates on the late night TV show Buenafuente hosted by popular comedian Andreu Buenafuente on private channel laSexta, where his entry was repeatedly promoted. He presented the song "Baila el Chiki-chiki" ("Dance the Chiki-chiki"), which is a parody of reggaeton music and has a joke reference to the world-famous ¿Por qué no te callas? incident. Some Eurovision fans accused this song of containing political content, which is not allowed in the Eurovision contest. An example of the song's political content would be "Lo baila Rajoy, lo baila Hugo Chávez, lo baila Zapatero, mi amor ya tú sabes." ("Rajoy dances it, Hugo Chávez dances it, Zapatero dances it; my love, you already know it"). Supporters of the song claimed that this is only a mention of Spanish political figures, and does not constitute political content. In any case, the most controversial lines were changed to fit the rules after the Spanish national final.

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Wikipedia