Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009
| Eurovision Song Contest 2009 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country |
 Spain
|
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| National selection | ||||
| Selection process | Eurovisión 2009: El retorno | |||
| Selection date(s) |
Online vote 19 December 2008– 20 January 2009 Auditions 31 January 2009 Semi-finals 14 February 2009 21 February 2009 28 February 2009 Final 28 February 2009 |
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| Selected entrant | Soraya | |||
| Selected song | "La noche es para mí" | |||
| Selected songwriter(s) |
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| Finals performance | ||||
| Final result | 24th, 23 points | |||
| Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest | ||||
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Spain participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009. Televisión Española (TVE) chose its entry through a contest called Eurovisión 2009: El retorno (Eurovision 2009: The Return), similar to Salvemos Eurovisión, which selected the 2008 entry.Soraya was selected on 28 February 2009 to represent Spain at Eurovision with the song "La noche es para mí".
From 24 November to 17 December 2008, songs could be submitted to TVE through MySpace. Then, an online vote, held from 19 December 2008 to 20 January 2009, chose the 50 songs to go through the next rounds. 30 of these qualified for the shows (three semi-finals and a final) that were broadcast live by TVE from the Casino l'Aliança del Poblenou theatre in Barcelona. The semi-finals (on 14, 21 and 28 February) and the final (on 28 February) were hosted by popular singer Alaska and co-hosted by sports reporter Miguel Serrano.
Though similar to TVE's selection for the 2008 contest, Salvemos Eurovisión, various changes to the format have occurred, including the introduction of a split televoting and jury selection for the televised rounds. The jury consisted of five people, one of which was selected by the public. The split between televoting and jury was the same as that which the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organiser of the Eurovision Song Contest, will use in the final of the contest.
978 entries were uploaded to MySpace to participate in the selection process. Only 455 were accepted by TVE because the rest of them did not qualify according to the rules. Unlike the previous year, the entries were allocated to 10 categories, with the five acts with most votes in each category proceeding to the next rounds. Another change in the online vote from last year was that instead of voting on the MySpace page, voters were only able to vote on the TVE website in order to cut down on fake voting. Every user was able to cast 20 votes each day, five per candidate.
The ten categories and the number of songs competing in each are shown below:
Out of the 50 songs selected, the top 5 in each of the 10 categories, the 20 with the most votes qualified directly for the semi-finals. As for the remaining 30 songs, they competed in auditions and the jury chose 10 of them to go through the semi-finals. The 5 qualifying songs within each of the 10 categories are shown below, with the direct qualifiers highlighted:
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