OTI Festival 1977

OTI Festival 1977 was the sixth edition of the OTI Festival, held on 12 November 1977 at the auditorium of the Centro Cultural de la Villa de Madrid in Madrid, Spain, and presented by Mari Cruz Soriano and. It was organised by the Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana and host broadcaster RTVE, who staged the event after winning the 1976 festival for Spain with the song "" by.
Broadcasters from twenty-one countries participated in the festival, setting a new record for the number of participating entries. The winner was the song "Quincho Barrilete" performed by Eduardo "Guayo" González representing Nicaragua.

Location

According to the rules of the OTI Festival at the time, the winning broadcaster of the previous edition would host the festival the following year. The Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana designated RTVE, which was the winning broadcaster of the previous edition with the song "" by for Spain, as the host broadcaster of the 1977 edition.
The RTVE hosting committee decided that Madrid was the most suitable city to host the OTI Festival, due to its notable infrastructure and experience in hosting international expositions and also because of its growing reputation as a tourist hub. The venue selected was at the auditorium of the Centro Cultural de la Villa de Madrid, a venue located under the Jardines del Descubrimiento at Plaza de Colón. This cultural center was inaugurated on 15 May 1977, a few months before the festival. In 2007, the auditorium was renamed Teatro Fernán Gómez.
The stage of the festival had a triangular shape and a light blue color with some metallic elements on top and the OTI logo in one of the corners. The stage was divided in two parts, the orchestral one and the central one, where the competing singers and bands gave their performances. There was a black scoreboard with electromechanical flip white numbers on the right side of the hall.

Participants

Broadcasters from twenty-one countries participated in this edition of the OTI Festival. The OTI members, public or private broadcasters from Spain, Portugal, and nineteen Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries of Ibero-America signed up for the festival. This number of participants broke the previous record of nineteen participants that was reached in 1974. All the countries that participated in the previous edition returned, joined by Portugal, which had missed the festival since 1974, and the Dominican Republic, which had missed the 1976 edition.
Some of the participating broadcasters, such as those representing Chile, Guatemala, and Mexico, selected their entries through their regular national selections. Other broadcasters, among them the host broadcaster, decided to select their entry internally.
Both Portugal and Brazil sent their entries in Portuguese, although the last lines of the Brazilian entry were performed in Spanish, making it the first and only bilingual song of the history of the festival.

Country

Broadcaster

Artist

Song

Language

Songwriter

Conductor

Festival overview

The festival was held on Saturday 12 November 1977, beginning at 24:00 CET. It was presented by Mari Cruz Soriano and. The musical director was Rafael Ibarbia who conducted the 44-piece RTVE Light Music Orchestra and the mixed choir of six voices when required. The draw to determine the running order was held at Prado del Rey a few days before the event. The show featured an orchestral performance of "Canta cigarra", the winning song from the previous year.
The winner was the song "Quincho Barrilete" performed by Eduardo "Guayo" González representing Nicaragua. Its performer and its conductor received a trophy each, while its songwriter received two, one for composer and another for lyricist. The trophy for the performer was delivered by María Ostiz; the one for the lyricist by Luis Ezcurra, vice-president of OTI; the one for the conductor by Jesús Álvarez Botero, president of the OTI programs committee; and the one for the composer by Guillermo Cañedo, president of OTI. The festival ended with a reprise of the winning entry.

Country

Artist

Song

Votes

Place

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Spokespersons

Each participating broadcaster appointed a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective jury in the order of participation via telephone. Known spokespersons at the 1977 festival are listed below.

– Nydia Caro
– Matías Prats Luque
–
– Altagracia Arévalo

Detailed voting results

Due to the increasing number of participants and the resulting longer duration of the competition, the number of judges per country that had been used until then was reduced and some rules were slightly modified.
Each participating broadcaster assembled a national jury located in its respective country, composed of three members each. Of those three members, at least one had to be a woman, and at least one had to be under 25 years old. The jury had three votes at its disposal that could distribute as wished between its favorite entry or entries, and could not vote for the entry representing its own country. Each participating broadcaster had also a delegate present in the hall to stand in for its jury if it was not receiving the event live, or in case of communication failure during the broadcast or voting. To ensure that there was no vote switching, before the voting segment began each participating broadcaster announced to its national audience the vote of its jury in local opt-out from its studios. In the event of a tie for first place, the stand-in delegates from the countries not affected by the tie would vote to select the winning song from among the tied ones. If a tie persisted after this second round, the entries with the highest number of votes would be declared joint winners ex aequo.
All the countries gave their votes remotely by telephone, except for Brazil, the Netherlands Antilles, and the United States, which used the stand-in delegates. The countries voted in order of participation, but due to a communication problem with the spokespersons of Honduras, Ecuador, and Venezuela, these had to be left for the end, with Venezuela ending up unable to respond and having to also use the stand-in delegate.

Broadcast

The festival was broadcast in the 21 participating countries, where the corresponding OTI member broadcasters relayed the contest through their networks after receiving it live via satellite. The day after the festival, TVE aired a special episode of its variety show 300 millones dedicated to the event, which was transmitted to all OTI members.
Known details on the broadcasts of the festival in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.

Reception

This edition of the festival not only broke the record of participating countries with twenty-one, but also reached a record of potential viewers with a striking viewing figures of three hundred million, one hundred million more than the previous edition.
The Nicaraguan victory in the contest, its first and only victory, and also the only victory of a Central American country in the event, became a hit in Nicaragua and its success affected both the performer Eduardo González and the song's writer Carlos Mejía Godoy. The lyrics of the song were also regarded as highly representative of the serious problems in Latin American society such as poverty. The song tells the history of a boy known as "Quincho Barrilete" a poor boy who tries to earn an honest living and to save money so that his younger brothers could go to the school in the future. A part of the chorus says "Long live the young people of my homeland," who are a clear example of poverty and dignity. Due to the moving history that the lyrics told, the singer and the author are widely remembered in Nicaragua.
The song "Rómpeme mátame" by the Spanish band Trigo Limpio also became a hit in Spain and Latin America. Although the lyrics of the song were controversial because they described a tortuous and possessive relationship, the fourth place that the band got consolidated their career in Latin America. Three years later, they would in the Eurovision Song Contest at the 1980 edition. Amaya Saizar, who was then the female vocalist of Trigo Limpio, would also participate in the Eurovision Song Contest at the 1984 edition as the female member of the band Bravo.
The Ecuadorian performer Marielisa also performed a song with a social background which was considered to be a response to the winning song of the festival in 1974 in Acapulco. While the message of the song of Nydia Caro states that songs don't improve the problems of the Latin American society, Marielisa's song, which ended fifth in the contest, states that those same problems must not be ignored.
Despite the shocking and unexpected last place of Mexico, partly due to the scandal that the victory of José María Napoleón in the national selection provoked, his song "Hombre" became a hit and launched his career, and he is now considered a superstar.