Leonor Andrade will represent Portugal at the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Há um mar que nos separa”.

Andrade triumphed in this year’s edition of Festival da Canção, the traditional qualification method used by Portuguese broadcaster RTP. After two semi-finals earlier this week, six songs went into battle this evening, with two televoting qualifiers and a jury pick proceeding to a superfinal.

With fan favourites Simone de Oliveira (ESC 1965, 1969) and Yola Dinis being ejected from the competition in the first round of voting, the fact that the superfinal was 100% televoting made it clear that one of Leonor Andrade and Teresa Radamanto – previously the televoting favourites – would be getting the ticket to Vienna.

And in the end, after a pleasingly nostalgic-meets-modern interval act involving 1974 Portuguese representative Paulo de Carvalho, Leonor Andrade was announced as the lucky winner!

In the #esc chat, our favourite of the night was Simone de Oliveira with an average score of 6.69 out of 10, followed by Yola Dinis with 6.61. (We did at least have Leonor Andrade in a close third place with 6.56!) You can see which of this week’s various national final entries will make it into the next heat of our SongHunt when it is launched on Sunday night – and you can still vote in the latest heat here!

After narrowly missing out on qualification last year, Portugal will be hoping for better fortunes in Vienna. “Há um mar que nos separa” (which translates as “There’s a sea that separates us” – it wouldn’t be a Portuguese entry without a mention of the sea…) will compete in the first half of the second semi-final of ESC 2015 on Thursday 21 May.

You can see a video of the song below: