Is the most watched program on Spanish television. And he faces a considerable problem. It is a topic that affects not its mechanics, but its most iconic and recognizable moment: those final minutes in which two contestants review the alphabet against the clock. The Supreme Court has ratified that this circle of letters was never owned by Antena 3, and in fact, its true owners have been waiting for decades for the courts to agree with them. The time has come.
The sentence. The Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court issued its resolution on April 30 and made it public on May 21, 2026. The ruling confirms the ruling of the Provincial Court of Barcelona and dismisses the appeals of Atresmedia and ITV Studios, producer of the program, concluding that El Rosco is a work protected by intellectual property whose ownership corresponds to the Dutch company MC&F Broadcasting Production and Distribution CV The sentence requires the cessation of broadcast of Rosco and a compensation of 50,000 euros for moral damages.
Delete ‘Pasapalabra’. In fact, there are a detail in the sentence which is more impressive on practical levels for the average viewer than the fine itself: the sentence imposes the destruction of all recordings of programs that include El Rosco. Although this “destruction” comes from article 139 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, whose purpose is to remove copies from commercial exploitation (DVDs, platform licenses, sales to third parties), it does not necessarily refer to the chain’s internal archive, that is, ‘Pasapalabra’ is not going to become lost media. In practice, however, you cannot license, sell or distribute the program in streaming. If Antena 3 had, for example, episodes available on Atresplayer, they would have to be removed.
The defense of Atresmedia. According to Atresmedia, El Rosco was a generic idea (questions ordered by the letters of the alphabet), and the ideas are not protectable by law. However, the Supreme Court, in reaching its decision, emphasizes that the test enjoys “sufficient originality” because it reflects free creative decisions of its authors, a “own uniqueness” that distinguishes it from other games based on the alphabet, and above all, it alludes to its visual configuration: the circular donut, the dynamic of passing and returning to unanswered questions and the final stopwatch. This idea was born in the Italian version of ‘Pasapalabra’, in 1999.
As arrive El Rosco to Spain without rights. It is to that point in history that we must go back to understand the dispute. The game was created by two Italians, Reto Luigi Pianta and René Mauricio Loeb, as part of a program called ‘End Game 21×100’, which was later merged with the Italian version of ‘The Alphabet Game’, called ‘Passaparola’, at the end of that decade. The creators assigned their rights to the Dutch production company MC&F. Until then, no conflict.
The problem came when ITV began licensing Pasapalabra to other European networks, including El Rosco in the package, as if it were part of the original format, something that MC&F has been calling illegal for decades. That is to say, Antena 3 has broadcast for 26 years a format that included a piece that was not its own, nor the person who sold it to it.
When Telecinco also lost ‘Pasapalabra’. It is not the first time that the Supreme Court has reorganized the Spanish television map on account of this program. In 2019, the Supreme Court forced Telecinco to stop broadcasting ‘Pasapalabra’ following the lawsuit brought by ITV in 2010 over the rights to the full format. Following its victory in court, ITV assigned the rights to Atresmedia, and Antena 3 resumed broadcasting on May 13, 2020. Since then the program has not stopped growing.
The importance of ‘Pasapalabra’. The contest is the cornerstone on which all of Antena 3’s late-night programming is based, currently the most viewed chain of Spanish television. In the 2024/2025 season, ‘Pasapalabra’ reached an average share of 18.3% of sharewith a maximum of 21.1% in June 2025, consolidating itself for the sixth consecutive year as the most watched daily program on Spanish television. And from there people do not turn away from television: El Rosco is the anchor that drags viewers towards the nightly news and towards the prime time of ‘The Anthill‘.
What is the future of ‘Pasapalabra’. The ruling does not eliminate ‘Pasapalabra’ from Antena 3. ITV’s contract with Atresmedia remains in force and the program can continue on the air. What it cannot do is include El Rosco. Program sources have confirmed that Atresmedia will maintain the broadcast “normally” until receiving official notification of the ruling and knowing the deadlines for the process. From there, the possible paths are to negotiate directly with MC&F to obtain a use license, design a new final test to replace the Rosco or wait for ITV to reach an agreement with MC&F. Problem: None of the three options are quick and all involve altering a program that, as it stands right now, is working like a charm.
Mediaset’s trick. And here comes the twist: apparently Approximately a year ago, Mediaset closed an agreement with MC&F to acquire the rights to Rosco, conditional on the Supreme Court resolving the dispute in the terms that have finally become known. With the sentence now final, Mediaset can create a program around Rosco. But that program cannot be called ‘Pasapalabra’ nor have the mechanics of the Antena 3 program.
In other words, if it is confirmed that Mediaset can use Rosco, the most famous program on television is now divided: its name and structure is from one network, its best-known test from another. In any case, we are going to see changes in the future, predictably in Access that Antena 3 now dominates. And whoever controls Access… controls the audiences.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings