Born María de los Ángeles Santamaría Espinosa on August 2, 1947, Massiel captured the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest for Spain. She quickly rose to become one of the leading vocalists in her homeland and throughout Latin America. In many places outside those regions, however, recognition centers on the single that edged past the year's dominant contender, Cliff Richards' "Congratulations." Her path through music proved uneven, marked by an initial withdrawal from the industry in the mid-'70s after the arrival of her son Aitor. When she resumed performing in 1981, the move ignited widespread enthusiasm for Mexican repertoire, as her album Tiemos Dificiles featured interpretations of songs by José María Napoleón and Juan Gabriel. The follow-up release, Corazon de Hierro, achieved still greater commercial success and yielded the worldwide single "Brindaremos por El." She declared a second retirement during the mid-'90s yet continued select projects for several additional seasons. In 1997 she issued a hip-hop reinterpretation of her Eurovision-winning "La La La" alongside the Spanish-language collection Baladas y Canciones de Bertolt Brecht, which paid homage to the compositions of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. The next year she both portrayed the lead and supplied the soundtrack for the film Cantando a la Vida, whose plot follows a vanished Eurovision champion. Massiel returned to public view in 2007, serving on the panel that selected Spain's Eurovision contestant and also delivering one of the competing numbers, "Busco un Hombre."
