María de los Ángeles Felisa Santamaría Espinosa (born 2 August 1947), professionally known as Massiel, is a Spanish pop singer. She won the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 with the song "La, la, la", beating the British pop singer Cliff Richard's "Congratulations". She decided to abandon her music career in 1996, but released another album a year later and a further one in 2007, along with two new editions of 1970s albums. Biography Massiel was born in Madrid, Spain. Her Asturian father, Emilio Santamaria Martín, was an artistic manager, so she was around singers and groups from her earliest childhood, and at a young age she decided to become a singer, actress, and songwriter. Her Asturian mother was Concepción Espinosa Peñas (1920-2011). Her first recordings were released in 1966: Di que no, No sé porqué, Llueve, No comprendo, Y sabes qué vi, Rufo el pescador, Aleluya and El era mi amigo. The song Rosas en el mar, written by her friend Luis Eduardo Aute in 1967, established her as a singer in Spain and Latin America. In 1967, she acted in the movie Vestida de novia. On 29 March 1968 Massiel was asked to replace singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat as Spain's representative at the Eurovision Song Contest. Serrat had intended to sing in Catalan, but the Francoist State would not allow this, insisting that the entry be performed in Castilian, in accordance with the language policies of Francoist Spain. Nine days before the contest, Massiel was on tour in Mexico. She returned to Spain, learned the song, and recorded it in five languages. On April 6 in London, she beat the favorite, Cliff Richard with "Congratulations", by one point and won the contest. Her song, "La, la, la", was written by Ramón Arcusa and Manuel de la Calva. A 2008 Spanish documentary by La Sexta accused Spain's television company TVE of bribing judges on the orders of General Franco. This allegation was based on a statement by journalist José María Íñigo, who would later claim that he had repeated a widespread rumour and that his words had been taken out of context. Both Massiel and Íñigo accused La Sexta of manufacturing the scandal. Some years later, she performed dramatic roles in theatrical productions like A los hombres futuros, yo Bertolt Brecht (1972), Corridos de la revolución: Mexico 1910 (1976) and Antonio and Cleopatra in the early 1980s. From 1966 to 1998,