The list of the 10 countries voted by the Spanish jury last night has been revealed today. After RTVE delayed the broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest semi final, the back-up juries vote was required because the television broadcast missed the international voting window. The jury's vote was then published earlier today by the president of the Spanish professional jury, Mauro Canut, on the RTVE website.
Although the blog on the official broadcaster's website earlier published the scores awarded, that was quickly removed. esctoday.com has decided to wait until after the Eurovision Song Contest final tomorrow before publishing them in order to prevent any possible tactical use of the results for betting, votingor poll predictions.
The list of countries that received points from Spain is however now widely available on the Internet. This is the list of the 10 countries voted by the Spanish back-up jury last night (in alplhabetical order):
- Azerbaijan
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Greece
- Hungary
- Lithuania
- Moldova
- Norway
- Serbia
- Ukraine
Having read the rules of the competition, esctoday.com can in fact NOT find any point that bars broadcasters from announcing their vote before the grand final on Saturday 16th May. Rule 12 clearly states that: "The full results of the voting in the Semi-Finals and the Grand Final shall be announced on the official website of the ESC, eurovision.tv, shortly after the end of the Grand Final.". This however is open to enterpretation and does not explicitely bar broadcasters from publishing their nationalvotes before the Grand final. Therefore, it seems that no rule has in fact been broken.
earlier today, esctoday.com reported that RTVE does not believe that it will face punishment for the debacle surrounding the late broadcast of the second Eurovision Song Contest semi final due to a contractual commitment clash. It was due to broadcast both the show and coverage of the Madrid Tennis Open at the same time.
A week earlier, Spain was given permission by the EBU to switch the semi final in which they could vote due to another commitment clash. This caused uproar in Portugal and Andorra, where they were hoping to benefit from similar cultural expression and thus votes from the country. The move promted Spanish representative, Soraya to publish a statement asking for the countries not to send a backlash towards her during the comptetition because she has no control over these decisions and hoped to avoid losing votes as a result.
