“You will burn in hell.” It is the comment that the singer Agoney (Tenerife, 27 years old) has heard several times in his life as a member of the LGTBI+ community. He recalled this in front of the media at dawn on Tuesday after appearing in the first semi-final of Benidorm Fest 2023 and becoming one of the candidates to win the competition. I want to burn, the song with which he tries to represent Spain in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, takes on the pain born of that hatred. Just 12 hours after his victory in the RTVE competition, in Benidorm, the canary tells a small group of media again that this sentence was spat in his face for the first time: “I was an altar boy at the age of 13, before starting singing. ” So he discovered a concept of hell that he didn’t know before. “There they talked hellishly to me about homosexuality. Everything was already clear to me because I hadn’t experienced that with my family. I found what I wanted sexually attracted, not bad,” he says.
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In creating a visual concept for the theme he presented in the Eurovision preselection, he and his team decided to incorporate this personal experience into the set design and choreography. A well-known religious and artistic reference, Michelangelo’s sculpture La piedad, appeared this Tuesday in its annotated staging, as a way of “connecting with the pain sometimes experienced” in the face of this judgmental commentary. In Quiero Arder he plays to rule this hell, to find the light in its darkness, to reappropriate the concept. “The LGTBI+ community still has few safe places and I wanted to make this new concept of hell one of them; that this song is a refuge,” he explains.
The canary confirmed his status as favorite to win Saturday’s final in this first semi-final of Benidorm Fest 2023 following his performance at the Palau d’Esports l’Illa de Benidorm. He was the only applicant placed between the two preferred options of the three voting streams that make up the complex classification system of organized competition. The expert jury as well as the televoting and the demoscopic random sample confirmed this with high scores. In the end, he led the list of four classifieds with 161 points and waited to select the other four finalists at the gala this Thursday, February 2nd.
I reject hate
Agoney regrets that the homophobic messages she often receives on social media come in large part from the same LGTBI+ community to which she belongs. “We speak of a collective as if all the people who belong to it have the same education. It scares me a lot that many gay people are still homophobic,” he comments after spending the night awake following the success of his first performance in Benidorm.
When the media asked him at dawn on Tuesday if he was prepared for such hate speech at the European level, he answered bluntly: “I don’t have to prepare for anything. People sharing hurtful comments should be made aware,” he said, mentioning Malbert, an influencer who is collaborating with TikTok on this coverage of Benidorm Fest 2023 and who is responsible for a podcast on Podimo, precisely titled Dear Hater . “They’re the ones who need to be re-educated, who need to be taught a lesson by being told that people who go on stage need to be respected,” the singer said. Hours later, he doubts whether he should have given wings to someone he deems unworthy. “I took advantage of the fact that this person who has been attacking me for five years was in that press room and that I finally had them in front of me to respond for the first time. And I think everyone in the room agreed with me,” he replies.
Limiting hate speech is one of the obsessions of the RTVE delegation that is running Benidorm Fest, aware that the competition is a great promotional showcase for the public entity, the city that hosts it and the Valencian community that the organization financially support the event. Agoney understands that the controversies that often surround this event have to do with its competitive component. “It’s something I’ve already experienced as a participant in the Operación Triunfo. What should always prevail is the art, the music and the artists that take the stage,” he defends.
His television experience, including as a contestant on Tu cara me suena and Dúos increíbles, where he was a stage partner for several weeks with a veteran like Ana Belén, has given him a plan to set up a bet that will appeal to Benidorm Fest audiences. “Your face looks familiar, gave me the opportunity to break free, put on a wig without anything happening and enjoy being on stage no matter what. I’m not operating on an open heart. But being with Ana Belén in Incredible Duos gave me the inner strength I needed to say: I’m an artist, I can go on this stage and really defend my music,” she comments.
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