The moment that generated the fiercest debate at the Benidorm Fest, aside from Chanel Terrero being chosen as the next representative for Spain at Eurovision 2022, was the performance of Rigoberta Bandini's "Ay mama."

During the song, she projected a huge image of a pregnant mother holding her bare belly. Lying on the floor, she began to murmur the prologue to the chorus: “Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma… long live the ma, ma, ma, ma…”

Bandini stood up, and at the back of the stage appeared a female breast as if it were a globe. Afterwards, she sang with her energetic band on stage.

"I don't know why our boobs are so scary, without them there would be no humanity or beauty, and you know it well," she said.

It was an honest tribute to women, motherhood and feminism, which generated a wave of admiration — and criticism — on social media.

 

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From the beginning, the lyrics of "Ay mama" are gratitude for all maternal efforts, which are often unrecognized.

“You, who have bled so many months of your life,” “To you, who always have soup in the fridge,” or “You, who tied your body well to my head,” are some of the verses she reels off during the song.

For many, the catchy melody and vindictive lyrics highlight the fear and social rejection female breasts still evoke, especially when a woman breastfeeds her baby in public. Even today, this vital act is often viewed with rejection.

Bandini asks her mother to stop the city "taking a breast out of it in pure Delacroix style."

The journalist Peio H. Riaño highlighted in eldiario.es that “the figure that Bandini builds in the 21st century is a woman who rises up against oppression,” unlike the one represented in the famous painting by Eugène Delacroix, Liberty leading the people, where the woman holding the French flag is represented as “an allegory of a masculine virtue.”

As expected, "Ay mama" has also entered Spanish politics. For the leader of the right-wing Popular Party (PP), Pablo Casado, the song is a "feminist manifesto," and he asked the members of the government who applauded the song to forget about Bandini and "take care of the women who work in restaurants or in the rural enviroment.” For Edurne Uriarte, Casado's party colleague, "Rigoberta Bandini and that feminism of the tits is the new benchmark of the extreme left."

Once again, a simplistic and strident debate has divided the Spanish society. Bandini's great success was not being elected as the next representative in Eurovision, but rather bringing to the central role of mothers for the development of humanity to the forefront.