27 April 1968
The claim that Eurovision 1968 was rigged by Franco so that Spain as winners would host the following year’s event to showcase his country and regime, denying hot favourite Cliff Richard and the UK the win in the process, gets re-aired occasionally without much in the way of hard evidence. Of course, it’d be a sorry state of affairs if Eurovision could be exploited by some repressive right-wing government for egregious culturewashing of its brutal militarism. Still, as urban myths go, Franco robbing Cliff of Eurovision victory is sumptuous stuff.
What happened on the night was Spain, with ‘La, La, La’ sung by Massiel, edged ahead of the UK by a single point thanks to the second-last jury vote – from Germany, who by 1968 hadn’t helped Spanish fascists since Guernica, albeit in different circumstances. Then, final jury Yugoslavia gave no votes to either but gave their top score to… Ireland! Communist dictator Tito doing fascist dictator Franco a Eurovision solid is a novel idea, to say the least. In fact, it looks more like Germany and Yugoslavia trolling the Brits, regardless of winner. The bonus for us was that final two-fingers via votes for Ireland; after all, in Eurovision 1968 we voted for the UK but they gave no votes to us. Robbed by Franco was too good for them!
Another way of looking at this is that Eurovision 1968 had been right on the night. However indignant Cliff and the Brits may be at losing to a refrain of “La, la la la, la la la, la la la / La, la la la, la la la”, Massiel’s song is pleasantly memorable enough to stick in my mind without undue hardship. ‘Congratulations’, though, is insufferable. It’s clearly a smug and blatant attempt to repeat the previous year’s ‘Puppet On A String’ UK win with another gimmicky organ-grinder ditty – same writers and all. Yes, Ireland has some moral culpability here, given one of those writers is Phil Coulter. (Imagine being responsible for ‘Congratulations’, Bay City Rollers singles and ‘Ireland’s Call’ yet not being hauled before the International Court of Human Rights. Strange.) The foot-stomping, the whimsical violin flourish and the can-can slow-down-speed-up, though, all make ‘Congratulations’ far worse.
Also, it’s performed by Cliff Richard – a shallow and creepy persona anyway, but in his Eurovision performance (below) revealing that he can’t dance. Rather than being the Federico García Lorca of a Franco plot, Cliff more likely turned off every jury across Europe with his gauche anti-charisma and smug assumption of victory. Ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha! Ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha!
Irish Number Ones 