It’s Leonor Andrade  for Portugal!

Leonor Andrade  won the Grand Final of Festival da Canção 2015, an RTP production, which was held earlier this evening (Saturday 7 March 2015).  She, with her winning entry Há um mar que nos separa, will represent Portugal at the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest, which will take place at Vienna’s Wiener Stadthalle in May.  Portugal will contest the second semi-final on Thursday 21^st May, where they will participate in the first half of the show.

Leonor Andrade was selected using a purely televoting method, beating Teresa Radamanto and Gonçalo Tavares in a three artist “Super Final” showdown to the title of Festival da Canção champion 2015, and thus securing the golden ticket to Vienna.  Yola Dinis, Simone de Oliveira and José Freitas were eliminated earlier in the evening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GutCfKsJiE

Tonight’s Grand Final was presented by Júlio Isidro and Catarina Furtado, and a webcast was available via rtp.pt and media.rtp.pt.  Tributes were paid during the show to the late Zé da Ponte, a fundamental figure in the world of Portuguese music.   Zé da Ponte, a composer, bassist and producer who passed away on 29th January 2015 at the age of just 60, composed Portugal’s Eurovision Song Contest entries of 1986 (Não sejas mau para mim by Dora), 1991 (Lusitana paixão by Dulce) and 2005 (Amar by 2B).  Twitter activity was encouraged using the hashtag #FestivalDaCancao .

Catch up with all this week’s Festival da Canção action here at ESC Today.

Portugal at the Eurovision Song Contest: The story so far..

Portugal debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest of 1964, with António Calvário and his entry Oração.  The Iberian nation has since made another 47 appearances at the Contest.  Portugal’s best result came in 1996, when Lúcia Moniz took O meu coração não tem cor to sixth place.

Will 2015 be the year of Portugal?  What do you think of Há um mar que nos separa?  Stay tuned to esctoday.com for all the very latest news on Leonor, Portugal, and the Eurovision Song Contest 2015!