Morten Thomassen is today writing of the second place song in 1979. ESC Covers google translated it from Norwegian to English.
What do you do when you are the last country to vote and lead by one point?
Well, either you don’t give the competitor any points or you give them almost the full pot.
That’s what the Spanish jury did in the Lord’s year 1979 and thus in many ways gave away the victory to Israel, who to all intents and purposes sang at home.
As expected, the cheering would never end in the hall that night, but if you look at the TV broadcast, it seems as if Betty Missiego was treating the winners from Israel to this.
She lost 9 small points and down to France in third place it was 10 points so a fairly safe silver place in other words.
“Su Cansion” was the name of the song and it is perhaps best remembered because Betty had four children with her on stage.
The children’s names were Javier, Alexis, Beatriz and Rosalia, and otherwise the rumors say that Spain probably happily gave away the victory to Israel so they avoided the cost of organizing the ESC final the following year.
Betty is a well-grown lady at 84 years old, so it is questionable whether she is still very active as an artist any longer.
Her real name is Beatriz Teresa Missiego Campos and she was born in Peru.
She started her artist career as a dancer, but injuries stopped that career so she started as a TV presenter in Peru.
It was obviously not enough so she started as a singer and moved to Spain to try her luck there.
She was no stranger to music competitions, she represented Peru in the Festival OTI competition which was a kind of Melodi Grand Prix for Spanish-speaking countries.
After her success in ESC-1979, she sent the song “Don Jose” to Spanish TV in the hope of becoming their representative in 1980, but did not make it.
In any case, she has had a long and certainly rich career and in case you were wondering, the children sang 157 la’s during songs, should only be missing, they are from the country that won with “La, La, La”.