He had no rival, neither for the professional jury, nor for the popular juries. Agoney won this Tuesday with a sweeping victory in the first semifinal of the Benidorm Fest 2023, and starts as a favorite for the final next Saturday, from which the representative of Spain will emerge in Eurovision.
His proposal was not trivial, nor was it politically correct. Although it was not born expressly for the festival, the mix of vocal display and spectacular staging, both live and through the cameras, widely convinced the decision-makers, who awarded it a crushing 161 points, 42 above the second-ranked , Alice Wonder.
Agoney appeared on stage dressed in a red vinyl jumpsuit and fulfilled what the title of his song predicted: I want to burn. Surrounded by fire, the former triumph sang loudly to those who questioned him in the past. Because his is a completely autobiographical letter: “I was an altar boy at the age of 13, just before I started singing. And that was my first contact with those who told me that I was going to burn in hell for being homosexual,” he tells EL MUNDO in full “emotional hangover”.
He has slept little, very little. She went to bed at five in the morning with the song “on loop.” He recreated in his mind what happened over and over again to elevate it to perfection next Saturday: “There will be small changes,” he confesses, “this morning they were already proposing costume changes, but not that. Small improvements can be made at the vocal level and scenic, but it won’t be a drastic change.”
Although his sexuality was never raised as a problem and he always had the unconditional support of his family, Agoney was so marked by those “first steps in hell” that he made them a banner and even represented himself on stage as Jesus in a tribute to Michelangelo’s Pietà. “It is more posed as something artistic than as a direct criticism of Catholicism”, he apologizes for the possibility of generating controversy, “the best way to pose in line with what the song narrates at that moment is with that wonderful Pieta that repeats the suffering, in this case of mine, of debating between heaven and hell”.
His choice is clear: “In the end I decide to be who I want to be, who I really am, with whatever consequences it brings: burn in hell.”
Agoney makes this hell his own as a defense, also for those who, a priori, belong to his own group, and denounces an internalized homophobia even within the LGTBI community: “There are very few safe places, there are many people who are homosexual and They’re homophobic, and that scares me a lot.”
Prey to a furious hatred in networks in each television appearance, from Operación Triunfo to Incredible Duos, going through Your face sounds to me, he attributes those unbridled passions to the competition. “People choose a favorite and think that their ideas are the only ones that prevail. They don’t realize that what is really important is art, music and respect for artists.”
He did not hesitate to name that hate after the gala. “Malbert, are you there? I saw him there before,” she snapped at the nightly press conference, referring to an influencer who, she says, has been insulting her on social networks for five years. “Maybe I made the mistake of naming a person, but I took advantage of having them in front of me, I had never responded to them,” he recalls now, “we have to re-educate these people, it is they who have to be taught a lesson.”
In addition to the handling of hate in networks, the television background has had a lot to do with Agoney’s comfortable victory. “Sometimes, even though we seem very confident, there are many of us who have a lot of respect for the stage,” she admits, “being on television has given me the strength and energy to get here.”
The Benidorm Fest is, above all, a television program. The musical proposals are designed for the camera, and do not always work for the public that comes to see him live. However, this Tuesday the 1,000 people in the public vibrated like never before with his proposal. “The balance is very difficult, but I have a team of set designers and a choreographer who is currently working in television and knows very well how this works,” he says. For him, enjoying the show is key: “When people are experiencing it, that is also broadcast on television.”
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