Prior to the 2019 Contest, Spain had participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in four consecutive years since its debut in the inaugural 2003 Contest, having won the contest on their second appearance with the song "Antes muerta que sencilla", performed by María Isabel. Spain came second twice, in both 2003 and 2005, and the remaining Spanish entrant finished in fourth position in 2006. The Spanish broadcaster TVE did not return to the contest in 2007, saying that "the Junior Eurovision promotes stereotypes we do not share".[1]
On 25 June 2019, TVE announced that they would return to the contest in 2019, after a 13-year absence.[2]
Before Junior Eurovision
Melani García was announced as the Spanish entrant on 24 July 2019 during the talk show A partir de hoy, hosted by Máximo Huerta and aired on La 1.[3][4] Her entry's title, "Marte", and a preview of the song were released to the public on 20 September 2019.[5] The song was written and produced by Pablo Mora alongside Manu Chalud, with the collaboration of Melani García and it was released in full on 4 October 2019.[6]
At Junior Eurovision
Melani García during her performance.
During the opening ceremony and the running order draw which both took place on 18 November 2019, Spain was drawn to perform fifth on 24 November 2019, following North Macedonia and preceding Georgia.[7] Melani was accompanied on stage by Edurne Rodriguez, Yara Díez, Violeta Leal and María Mihali.[8]
Voting
The same voting system that was introduced in the 2017 edition was used, where the results were determined by 50% online voting and 50% jury voting. Every country had a national jury that consisted of three music industry professionals and two children aged between 10 and 15 who were citizens of the country they represented. The rankings of those jurors were combined to make an overall top ten.[9]
The online voting consisted of two phases. The first phase of the online voting began on 22 November 2019 when a recap of all the rehearsal performances was shown on the contest's website Junioreurovision.tv before the viewers could vote. After this, voters also had the option to watch longer one-minute clips from each participant's rehearsal. This first round of voting ended on 24 November at 15:59 CET. The second phase of the online voting took place during the live show and began right after the last performance and was open for 15 minutes. International viewers were able vote for a minimum of three and a maximum of five songs.[10] They were also able to vote for their own country's song. These votes were then turned into points which were determined by the percentage of votes received. For example, if a song received 10% of the votes, it received 10% of the available points.
^Eurovisión Junior 2019. RTVE.es a la carta. Event occurs at 00:09:55. Retrieved 15 December 2019. El jurado español, el nuestro, lo integran el artista y productor Pablo Pinilla, las cantantes María Isabel, la ganadora de Eurovisión Junior en 2004, y Natalia Rodríguez, la cantante y compositora. Junto a ellos Ginebra y Jorge, del coro de niños de la Comunidad de Madrid.
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