Laureano Oubiña c./ Atresmedia Corporación de Medios de Comunicación S.A.; Bambú Producciones S.L. and Netflix International BV.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of 2 December 2025 (no. Appeal 7262/2024) resolves the various appeals filed in the framework of a dispute between Mr. Laureano and the companies Atresmedia Corporación de Medios de Comunicación S.A. (hereinafter, Atresmedia), Bambú Producciones S.L. (hereinafter, Bambú) and Netflix International BV (hereinafter, Netflix). The conflict arises as a result of the broadcast of the series Fariña, an audiovisual work based on a book and "inspired by real events" related to tobacco smuggling and the introduction of drugs on the Galician coasts in the 80s. It features a character who not only bears the real name of the plaintiff, but also has physical, biographical and behavioral features that allow him to be clearly identified as Mr. Clemente, who had been convicted in the past for his participation in drug trafficking activities.
Mr. Laureano filed an action in which he requested a declaration that the defendants had violated his rights to honour, personal and family privacy and his own image by the production and broadcasting of the series Fariña, alleging that they should be ordered to cease the unlawful interference and to compensate him jointly and severally of 1,500,000 euros. as well as to publish, at their own expense, the ruling of the sentence in several newspapers and television channels. Specifically, the applicant alleged that, in the television series, one of the characters who was inspired by him, and bore his name and surname, appeared in several scenes of sexual content together with his wife, and in one of the scenes a certain relationship of the applicant with cocaine trafficking was insinuated.
The Court of First Instance No. 3 of Vilagarcía de Arousa dismissed the claim in its entirety. It considered that the series did not attribute to the applicant criminal acts other than those that were already public, so that it did not infringe his right to honour, that the use of his name did not constitute an illegitimate interference with his own image as it was a fictional work inspired by notorious events, and that the intimate scenes were part of the creative licence of the genre.
In the second instance, the Provincial Court of Pontevedra partially upheld the plaintiff's appeal. He stated that only one scene – the first of chapter 1, in which the police raid on the character's home while he has sex with his partner is dramatized – violated his right to privacy. For this reason, it ordered its immediate withdrawal from all platforms, set compensation of 15,000 euros and forced Atresmedia to publish the ruling in the 9:00 p.m. news. He rejected, however, the rest of the allegations relating to honour, his own image and other sexual scenes, as well as the character's link to cocaine trafficking.
After the ruling of the Provincial Court, both the plaintiff and the three defendant companies (Atresmedia, Bambú and Netflix) filed appeals, all of which were admitted by the Supreme Court. As for the appeal filed by the applicant, in the first place, he argued that the other erotic scenes in which the characters representing him and his wife appeared constituted a violation of his right to privacy, and that the Provincial Court should have extended the declaration of unlawful interference to all of them. Secondly, he denounced the violation of his right to honour, on the understanding that the scene in which his link to the transport of cocaine was insinuated implied a false accusation of criminal conduct that aggravated his public image. Finally, he affirms the violation of his right to his own image, derived from the non-consensual use of his name and surname to identify the character of the series.
For its part, in the appeal filed by Atresmedia, it argued that the Provincial Court violated both its right to freedom of artistic creation (Article 20.1.b EC) and the constitutional doctrine on balancing with the right to privacy (Article 18 EC). The channel criticises the court of appeal for having treated the opening scene – brief, unnude and clearly fictional – as if it reproduced a real event in the applicant's private life, when it is only a narrative device of little importance. In its second plea, Atresmedia complained of the incorrect application of Article 7.3 LO 1/1982, considering that the Provincial Court overestimated the alleged intrusion into privacy, ignoring that the scene did not reveal authentic data or invade the strictly reserved area of the applicant, but was part of the dramatisation of the audiovisual genre.
Bambú Producciones argued in its appeal that the Provincial Court violated its fundamental right to freedom of expression and artistic creation (Articles 20.1.a and b CE), since the scene considered harmful was invented, manifestly fictitious and did not reveal any real fact or confidential data of the applicant, so it could not constitute an intrusion into his privacy. The production company insisted that veracity is an essential requirement to assess a violation of the right to privacy, and reproached the Court for having made a subjective and aesthetic weighing judgment, describing the scene as "unnecessary" or intended to "hook the viewer", criteria that – in its opinion – lack legal relevance to assess an illegitimate intrusion.
Finally, Netflix argued in its appeal that the Provincial Court misinterpreted the scope of protection of the right to privacy (Article 18.1 EC), by considering as unlawful interference a clearly fictitious scene that did not reproduce real events in the applicant's life. It argued that not every representation of sexual activity necessarily belongs to the strictly protected sphere of private life, especially when Mr. Laureano himself had made public parts of his personal and family life. In a second plea, he denounced a violation of the freedom of artistic creation (Article 20.1.b CE), on the grounds that the Provincial Court carried out an incorrect weighting, since the scene in question was very brief, not very explicit and without offensive intent, and constituted a common narrative resource to contextualize the relationship of the characters. In Netflix's opinion, demanding its suppression would imply imposing a moralistic restriction and incompatible with the freedom of audiovisual creation.
For its part, the Public Prosecutor's Office sided with the defendants and maintained that the scene in question did not affect the core of the applicant's privacy, since it constituted a plausible narrative licence that served to reflect the surprise characteristic of the arrests depicted in the series. Thus, he stressed that in works of fiction inspired by real events it is legitimate to add episodes or elements that did not actually occur, as long as they are plausible and do not reveal genuinely private data.
In view of the above, the Supreme Court finds that the grounds of cassation raised by the applicant and by the production companies are closely interrelated. While Mr. Laureano maintains that the Provincial Court should have extended the declaration of unlawful intrusion into his privacy to all the sexual scenes in which the character inspired by him appears, the defendants – Atresmedia, Bambú and Netflix – challenge just the opposite: they consider that not even the initial scene, in which the characters are briefly seen having sexual relations before the police raid, it can be classified as infringing the right to privacy, either because it does not really affect his private sphere, or because it would be protected by the freedom of artistic creation of Article 20 EC. This contrast of approaches leads the Supreme Court to resolve all the grounds of cassation together.
From there, the Chamber proceeds to delimit the conflict between fundamental rights. On the one hand, there are the applicant's personality rights – honour, privacy and self-image – protected by Article 18.1 EC. On the other hand, the Fariña series constitutes an audiovisual work protected by intellectual property, the production and dissemination of which falls within the freedom of literary and artistic creation of Article 20.1.b EC. The Court recalls that it has already resolved similar conflicts on numerous occasions and that, in accordance with its jurisprudence and the consolidated doctrine of the Constitutional Court, the right to artistic creation is an autonomous right, endowed with a wide margin of creative configuration, especially in works of fiction inspired by real events.
The Supreme Court stresses that artistic creation – including audiovisual works – enjoys intense constitutional protection, which prevents it from demanding the same criteria of truthfulness that govern freedom of information or imposing limitations based on judgments of taste, opportunity or style. Only when fiction seriously and unjustifiably invades the core of a personality right should unlawful interference be found. In addition, it recalls that constitutional jurisprudence has insisted that fiction can take data from reality and transform them narratively, without this automatically entailing a violation of fundamental rights, even when the characters are recognizable.
In this case, the Supreme Court starts from the fact that the character of Fariña inspired by the plaintiff is fully identifiable to any viewer – since he appears with his name and surnames, physically characterized in a similar way and linked to drug trafficking activities for which he was effectively convicted. However, he recalls that the series is expressly presented as "inspired by real events" and warns that some scenes and characters have been dramatized, which confirms that it is not a documentary but a work of fiction that combines real elements with narrative licenses typical of the genre. This nuanced relationship with reality – neither faithful reproduction nor totally unrelated fiction – is inherent in audiovisual productions based on real events and requires a particularly careful analysis of challenges relating to personality rights, taking into account whether the scenes in question attribute intimate or dishonourable events with sufficient plausibility to seriously affect the applicant's protected sphere.
Likewise, the Supreme Court rejects the allegation of violation of the right to honour, considering that the applicant has the status of a public figure due to his convictions for serious crimes of drug trafficking, an activity of obvious general interest. In this context, the fact that the series links him, even indirectly or insinuated, with cocaine trafficking does not imply a significant damage to his reputation, already publicly associated with such conduct, especially since it is a fictional work inspired by real events, which does not require the requirement of truthfulness inherent in freedom of information. In the same way, the Court rejects the alleged violation of the right to one's own image, since the complaint relating to the use of her name and surname was filed late on appeal and cannot be reviewed in cassation, as it was not raised in the initial application and the ratio decidendi of the Provincial Court was not challenged.
Finally, the Court also rejects the allegation of violation of the right to privacy. In that regard, it recalls that Fariña is a work of fiction based on real events and that the intimate scenes depicted by actors form part of the narrative licences of the genre, without reproducing authentic facts of the applicant's private life. The Chamber stresses that, although the character is clearly recognizable, the sexual scenes in question are very brief, not very explicit, with actors dressed and are integrated into the plot without a special dramatic role. From the perspective of the average viewer, they are perceived as a cinematographic recreation, not as the disclosure of the actor's real sex life.
Consequently, the Supreme Court dismisses in its entirety the appeal filed by Mr. Laureano and, on the contrary, upholds the appeals filed by Atresmedia, Netflix and Bambú Producciones, thus revoking the judgment handed down by the Provincial Court