RTVE, the Spanish public broadcaster, has today opened the process to apply to represent Spain in Junior Eurovision 2022. The deadline will be open from today, August 16, to September 15, at which time the entity will begin to evaluate the applications received.
If you are between 9 and 14 years old, this is your chance to win Eurovision! This is the slogan that has been flooding the social networks and advertising spaces of RTVE for days, and it is not surprising, because the entity begins today the first open search for a representative for Junior Eurovision since 2006, the last open application process from which the Manchego Dani Fernández came out.
If you are reading this, it is because the process is of your interest. Please, read carefully and follow the steps to register. The casting consist of a first part online and a second in person. While the performer is selected, the public broadcaster will look for the best song to win the festival, which will be defended by the artist or group chosen during the aforementioned phases.
From 12:00 noon today you can access the online casting page in RTVE.es and if you are between 9 and 14 years old, you can send your videos demonstrating your vocal and interpretive skills. The deadline ends on September 15, so the young talents of Spain will have practically one month to be able to send their applications. At that time, an assessment commission made up of professionals from RTVE will select the most appropriate performers. Before submitting your videos, take a look at the requirements and mechanics of the process to be sure that you meet all the requirements.
PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS
In order to take part in the Junior Eurovision casting process, boys and girls will have to be between 9 and 14 years old, therefore their date of birth must be between December 12, 2007 and December 11, 2013. Minors will be involved in this process, so, as the current Spanish legislation marks, they will require authorization signed with the consent of both parents in a model that can be found at the end of the rules document, signed with the consent of both parents or of the one who has the parental authority of the minor, or of his guardian.
Those interested must have Spanish nationality or permanent residence in Spain, and in the case of a group, at least 50 percent must meet this condition. The Spanish broadcaster clarifies that minors who are first-degree relatives of RTVE workers, or of people involved in the production of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, cannot participate in the selection. On the other hand, and this is a novelty with respect to the national selection procedures of other countries, the candidates presented may not have a recording contract or of any other nature that prevents the exploitation of the interpretation and personal image by RTVE. The incompatibility of participating at the same time in the Spanish national selection and in other European national finals is also highlighted.
MECHANICS OF THE PROCESS
As indicated by RTVE, this national final will consist of two phases, a first online casting open to any child who meets the requirements and a second phase face-to-face, where only children who pass the first phase of online casting will attend.
FIRST PHASE (ONLINE CASTING) – PHASE OVERCOME
The first phase will consist of an online casting through RTVE.es, for this parents or legal guardians must access the website www.rtve.es/eurovisionjuniorcasting2022 (that will be activated on August 16) and fill out the participation form and attach the authorization and assignment of rights signed. In addition, for the casting phase you must send a video in which the artist interprets a song of free choice on an instrumental basis and another video of a song that has represented Spain in Eurovision or Junior Eurovision, on an instrumental or a cappella basis, as well as three photos of the candidate. The deadline for submitting applications to the online casting will be from August 16 at 12:00 noon until September 15, 2022 at midnight.
Once the deadline closes, a valuation commission made up of RTVE professionals will select the candidates who best fit the call and will be contacted to prepare the second phase.
SECOND PHASE (FACE-TO-FACE CASTING)
When the online candidates have been selected, they will be summoned in a face-to-face casting that will take place in Madrid at the end of September. Once this second test is finished, the commission will have a maximum of 10 days to assess the finalists. RTVE will assign to the candidate or group chosen as the representative of Spain in Junior Eurovision 2022 several song proposals, of which one of them will be selected as the RTVE song for Junior Eurovision 2022. The winning proposal will represent Spain in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022 organized by the EBU.
The candidate chosen to represent Spain in Junior Eurovision 2022 must record throughout the month of October 2022 the song and the music video of the theme chosen for the Festival, which RTVE will deliver to the EBU with a deadline of November 4, 2022. RTVE reserves control of the artistic direction and staging of the performance, styling and makeup and will be responsible for the travel, accommodation and maintenance of the Artist and a parent to the host city of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. The minor or minors chosen to participate in Junior Eurovision must travel together with a parent/guardian to Yerevan (Armenia), foreseeably between 4 and 12 December 2022.
You can consult the complete document of the rules, as well as the annexes and other documents to be provided, in the following link.
This new method to appoint our standard-bearer will be a platform that will provide young artists of our country with more tools and opportunities to spread their talent, adding more transparency and openness in the process, which used to be hermetic in previous years. The great euphoria and the social phenomenon that emerged among the new generations of our country after the successful passage of Chanel Terrero on the Eurovision stage will undoubtedly be an incentive for this call for artists to be multitudinous and a success.
THE BEGINNING OF A LONG-TERM STRATEGY
Two days ago we announced on our website all the ins and outs of this new selection process for Spain in Eurovision in an exclusive interview of our colleague Fran Justicia to María Eizaguirre (Director of Communication and Participation of RTVE), who also told us details about Benidorm Fest 2023.
This announcement lays the foundations for a new long-term strategy of the Spanish television to increase the interest of the audience and young artists towards Junior Eurovision. As María Eizaguirre has told to ESCplus, RTVE’s intention is to implement different measures to enhance the children’s musical format for future editions. These statements, in addition to reconfirming the intention of the corporation to participate regularly in Junior Eurovision in the future, encourage the return of televised preselections to choose our participants in future contests.
Without a doubt, it is a declaration of intentions of the great commitment of RTVE with the European children’s festival, which represents an opportunity like few others to export young talent and provide the new generations of artists with a springboard to reach a wider audience. The festival also highlights different values such as friendship, companionship, solidarity or cultural dissemination among the little ones.
Although this edition the casting will be held closed-doors, we are working so that the format evolves and develops differently in the coming years.
María Eizaguirre (Director of Communication and Participation of RTVE)
SPAIN AT JUNIOR EUROVISION
Spain is one of the countries that boasts the best results in the children’s festival, having finished among the three best positions in 5 of the 7 festivals in which it has participated to date, including a victory and two second places.
Spain’s participation in the festival is divided into two stages. The first of them and the most media occurred from 2003 to 2006, the year in which RTVE decided to end its streak of successful participations on the grounds that the festival promoted stereotypes that were not shared from the broadcaster and exploited the participants. During this stage there was the first and only victory to date of Spain in the festival by the hand of the Andalusian María Isabel and her remembered ”Antes Muerta Que Sencilla”. Between 2003 and 2004 the remembered Spanish pre-selection Eurojunior also took place, the result of the desire of RTVE and the production company Gestmusic to replicate the success of the musical talent show Operación Triunfo in the youngest artists, resulting in a social phenomenon among young people that is still remembered today.
The evolution and modernization of the festival added to the continuous requests and wishes of Spanish fans led RTVE to return to the festival in 2019 after a period of absence of 13 years, in this way the Spanish public television resumed a streak of annual participation in the festival that extends to the present and that faces its fourth year in a row. This return was a qualitative success thanks to the good general reception of our participants, highlighting the third places obtained by Melani Garcia and her lyrical pop “Marte” in 2019 and by Soleá and her danceable ”Palante”.
Although the time of broadcast of the festival and the new patterns of television consumption make it impossible to obtain the former audience data, it results in a commitment to music, young talent and diversity and raises a lot of interest in the digital field, especially among young people.
In the last Junior Eurovision Song Contest, held last Sunday, December 19 live from La Seine Musicale in Paris under the slogan of Imagine, we were represented by the winner of the last edition of The Voice Kids Levi Díaz. His song “Reír”, obtained a 15th position with 77 points. Will we manage this year to get hold of the long-awaited crystal microphone of the festival?
JUNIOR EUROVISION SONG CONTEST 2022
The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022 will be held in Yerevan, Armenia next Sunday, December 11. The Karen Demirchyan Complex will host the show where various artists aged between 9 and 14 from different countries in Europe will fight to take the prized crystal microphone, a trophy that accredits the victory in the contest.
The organization of the show by the Armenian public television ARMTV comes after the victory of Malena and her song “Qami Qami” on the stage of Paris on December 19, awakening a collective euphoria throughout her homeland and making the whole country face with great enthusiasm and responsibility the challenge of organizing the festival, that promises to be more special than ever given that this 2022 celebrates its 20th anniversary. It will not be the first time that Armenia organizes an edition of the Junior Eurovision, having had the opportunity to do so in 2011, also at the Karen Demirchyan Complex.
There are 16 European televisions that have already confirmed their participation in the festival so far, however, the ambition and efforts of the organization predicts a greater final number of participants, with the aim that this twentieth edition of the children’s contest being remembered as one of the most spectacular in its history.
Also, we already know the identity of 4 of the participants who will take the stage of the contest this December, all of them will reveal their song over the next few months:
- Georgia – Mariam Bigvava
- Kazakhstan – David Charlin
- North Macedonia – Lara and Irina
- Portugal – Nicolas Alves