A Spanish broadcaster is demanding a full breakdown of votes cast in the Eurovision final on Saturday – after Spain awarded Israel the highest possible 12 points.
Publicly-owned RTVE will formally request an audit of Spain’s televoting results from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) on Monday.
It said in a statement that it will request a detailed report to find out how Israel’s entry received so much support from the Spanish public.
It comes as Spain’s entry Melody is flying back to Sevilla ‘to be with friends and family’ after her shock finish in 24th position out of 26. Spain received just 10 points from the public vote.
RTVE said it also wants to hold talks on the televoting system, claiming that multiple other countries share its concerns.
According to figures accessed by RTVE, the Spanish public cast a total of 142,688 votes in the final – almost 10 times the number of votes cast in the semi-final (14,461).
The overwhelming majority of the votes cast during Saturdays final were online (111,565), while the rest were made via text (23,840) and phone (7,283).
‘The Spanish delegation has asked the organisers to know how the Spanish vote was distributed. That is, how many votes each country received in Spain,’ RTVE said.
Israel almost clinched the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 title after earning more top scores in the public vote than the winning entry from Austria.
In total, voters from 13 countries gave their maximum 12 points to the Israeli state: the UK, Azerbaijan, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, Australia, Spain, and the non-European vote.
Belgium gave Israel 12 points despite the fact that the country did not even air its performance.
Instead, the broadcast was interrupted with a message that read: ‘We condemn Israel’s human rights violations. Furthermore, the State of Israel is destroying press freedom. We are interrupting the broadcast.’
