As we reported yesterday, just over a week after the Eurovision 2023 Final, the Spanish national broadcaster RTVE has announced that Ana María Bordas will resume the job of the Spanish Head of Delegation in Eurovision 2024 and the role at Benidorm Fest, and that she will replace Eva Mora. As the Spanish news portal Infobae reported, the reason behind this decision is not business – it’s personal.
Eva Mora took over the job of the Head of Delegation in 2022, and she was one of the initiators of the successful return of Benidorm Fest, after a year of bad results in Eurovision. She overturned the Spanish success, as already in 2022 Spain achieved its best result in Eurovision in 27 years – 3rd place with Chanel and her “SloMo”, and a 17th place earlier this month with Blanca Paloma and her “EaEa”. Nevertheless, RTVE has decided to replace her and ignore her two years of success at Eurovision, Benidorm Fest and Junior Eurovision, without even mentioning her name in any of the press releases announcing that Ana María Bordas is once again taking charge of the delegation.
Infobae reports that the entry of José Pablo López as the Head of Content in RTVE marked a before and after in the team in charge of Benidorm Fest, as tensions between him and María Eizaguirre (the Head of Communication and Participation in RTVE) did not take long to appear. But changes in the delegation started already prior to the Liverpool edition, as María Eizaguirre replace Alícia León (who was the Spanish Head of Press for over 15 years) with a “person of trust” – María Boj.
Tensions between Eva Mora and María Eizaguirre apparently started back in Junior Eurovision 2022 in Yerevan, resulting in Eva Mora being left out from press conferences and delegation meetings. This also led to Eva’s absenses from the press conferences leading to this year’s Benidorm Fest. Instead, Eva Mora was more focused on the artists themselves, whilst María Eizaguirre continued to lead all the events and presentations around the festival.
The bad relationship between María and Eva was already well known in April, when Eizaguirre was involved in a great controversy during her trip to Kenya. She used several children from Kenya to promote the candidacy of Blanca Paloma and received a barrage of criticism on social networks and across Spanish media, and this was when the media discovered that María Eizaguirre and Eva Mora had unfollowed each other on Instagram as well.
The first time the two met publicly was at Blanca Paloma’s farewell event in April, before the trip to Liverpool. During this event, María was in charge of presenting the act, and when she was supposed to give the word over to Eva, she avoided announcing her presence, but verbally showed her to take over the microphone. Due to all of this, José Pablo López made the decision to restructure the delegation after the 2023 edition. Eva Mora was informed about the decision at the same time when María Eizaguirre’s communication team informed the press about the changes and the information about Benidorm Fest 2024.
The old-new Head of Delegation is going to re-join the Eurovision family after a two year absense. She was previously in charge of the Spanish delegation from 2017 until 2021. During this period, Spain achieved bottom-5 results, including a last place in 2017 when Manel Navarro was selected to represent his country with “Do It For Your Lover”, after a last-minute rule change in the national selection.
RTVE will once again organize Benidorm Fest in order to find the successor of Blanca Paloma in 2024, and the submission period for this festival is already open.
