Prior to the 2021 contest, Spain had participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest on six occasions since its debut in the inaugural 2003 contest. Spain won the 2004 contest with the song "Antes muerta que sencilla", performed by María Isabel.[2] In the 2020 contest, Soleá represented Spain with the song "Palante", achieving 3rd place out of 12 countries with 133 points.[3]
Levi Díaz (born 11 August 2008)[4] is a Spanish singer from Cornellà de Llobregat.[5] In July 2021, he won the sixth season of La Voz Kids, as part of team Melendi.[6] He also won the first edition of La Voz de Cornellà in February 2019, in the youth category and additionally the audience award for most charismatic contestant.[7]
"Reír" (lit.'Laugh') is a song by Levi Díaz, written by David Roma. The song was revealed on 18 October 2021, along with a lyric video recorded in the streets of Madrid.[8][9]
Díaz said about the song: "Laughing is very important. They call me the forever smiling kid and we want to share a message of joy."[10]
At Junior Eurovision
After the opening ceremony, which took place on 13 December 2021, it was announced that Spain would perform sixteenth on 19 December 2021, following Netherlands and preceding Serbia.[11]
At the end of the contest, Spain received 77 points, placing 15th out of 19 participating countries. This is the lowest result Spain had achieved at the contest to date.
Voting
The same voting system that was introduced in the 2017 edition was used, where the results were determined by 50% online voting and 50% jury voting. Every country had a national jury that consisted of three music industry professionals and two children aged between 10 and 15 who were citizens of the country they represented. The rankings of those jurors were combined to make an overall top ten.[12]
The online voting consisted of two phases. The first phase of the online voting began on 17 December 2021 when a recap of all the rehearsal performances was shown on the contest's website Junioreurovision.tv before the viewers could vote. After this, voters also had the option to watch longer one-minute clips from each participant's rehearsal. This first round of voting ended on 17 December at 15:59 CET. The second phase of the online voting took place during the live show and began right after the last performance and was open for 15 minutes. International viewers were able vote for three songs.[13] They were also able to vote for their own country's song. These votes were then turned into points which were determined by the percentage of votes received. For example, if a song received 10% of the votes, it received 10% of the available points.
