In the 1990s, Spanish television was at its peak. Huge, expensive productions were being made, audience figures were massively high, and everyone was willing to spend their evenings watching the TV. By the end of 1992, Radiotelevisión Española (TVE) had ceased taking part in Jeux Sans Frontières, allegedly because of poor ratings. This was perhaps understandable, as each season of Jeux Sans Frontières had been screened on different days and in different timeslots: in 1990 it went out at midday; in 1991 it held the 10.00pm slot; and in 1992 started on Saturdays at 7.30pm, only for the final two programmes to move to Saturday mornings without explanation. The series had not been given a regular timeslot, so it could be argued that viewers were not given the chance to get into the habit of watching the programme - and knowing where to find it.

In 1995, TVE had the idea of adapting Jeux Sans Frontières to home soil. Consequently, they created the first tournament of Spanish towns, and launched it as Cuando Calienta el Sol (we list it here as the first series of Grand Prix del Verano for ease of reference). With a leaning more towards Jeux Sans Frontières than to Intervilles or It's A Knockout, four towns took part in every programme. According to presenter Ramon García, many towns declined the invitation to take part in that first season, as they didn't understand the point being involved. The show met with a good response and was relatively successful, and Cudillero - who won - along with most of the other towns that took part saw a huge rise in tourism as many viewers visited having seen those towns represented on TV. All the towns were small, and most of them not so well known, so it had a huge impact on them.

Word got around and, by time the show was rebranded in the summer of 1996 as Grand Prix del Verano, many towns now wanted to take part. TVE received a large number of submissions from towns wishing to participate, and changed the format to a one-against-one competition. It was an immediate success. For ten years, everyone watched the show, especially children, who loved to see the show in the company of their parents and grandparents.

Unfortunately, by the middle of the first decade of the 2000s, Spanish TV had changed. While never a failure, Grand Prix was starting to lose its status and ratings were perhaps not as strong as they once had been. TVE decided to cancel it after the 11th season in 2005, citing the high production costs involved in making the programme. Knowing that the format was still successful, FORTA decided to revive it in 2007, working to a tighter budget, along with some other formats which were successful in the 1990s. Grand Prix was the only one to survive beyond one season. Figures were still more than respectable, but the budget would ultimately prove insufficient and FORTA dropped the series in 2009.

Since then, Carlo Boserman, the person behind Grand Prix, had explored many ways in which it might be possible to bring it back to TV. Every year, he had made some changes to adapt it to the new audiences. However, television companies were reluctant to broadcast it again. They said that Grand Prix was outdated and it was not going to have any success considering it was not a cheap programme to make. In the meantime, members of the viewing audience were asking for its comeback, time and again, only to have vague responses from the TV channels, who suggested that they would consider it, but it was not in their current plans (a common tactic intended to make those persistent questions go away!).

In 2021, the internet live-streaming personality Ibai Llanos was keen for the show to be brought back, and decided to produce a new series on the Twitch platform, to the point where it was actually promoted as a forthcoming series. Unfortunately, as Ibai recently said, the high costs and some discrepancies led to it to be forever in development hell. Apparently, though, another broadcaster was thinking on the idea, when finally in 2023 TVE gave the green light to the show's remarkable return to the screen. The first new episode aired on Monday 24th July 2023 and was met with not only a warm response on social media, but also with highly impressive audience figures.

by David Laich Ruiz