After the unsuccesful entry in 2008, Casanova, mostly sung in English, RTVA have decided to stick to the main language of the Principality and a song in Catalan will be back in the Eurovision stage next year. This has been confirmed by Enric Castellet, general director of Andorra Televisió.
This does not mean that the song to represent Andorra next year in Moscow will be necessarily 100% sung in Catalan. According to Mr Castellet, traces of foreign languages can be allowed, but the relevance of those words will be evaluated first, with the aim of keeping the essence of the Andorran Eurovision project. The head of Andorra Televisió has also stated that a high number of entries received by the broadcaster are in English and, should one of them is selected, it would be translated into Catalan.
As esctoday.com reported some days ago, 107 songs have been submitted to the Andorran public broadcaster, which came from across Europe. Mr Castellet has revealed that some of the names behind them are popular both in the national and the international music scene. The head of ATV feels proud of the success of this year's Andorran call for songs and, especially, of the quality and high level of the songs coming from inside the country.
In total, 64 songs were submitted with no singer directly attached, 15 performers sent applications to perform without a song ready and 28 applications by singers to perform their own song were received. The first stage of the selection starts today. A jury formed by RTVA insiders will choose 5 performers from the first group, 5 songs from the second group and 4 applicants from the third one. Then, on December 13th, an external panel will pick the singer or singers and narrow down the songs to a total of 3. Later in January, the song to represent Andorra will be chosen by the public via SMS through four televised galas.
RTVA will devote a budget of 120,000-130,000 euro to the selection process, which could increase should the public broadcaster is granted financial support from private sponsors.
