Spain's Supreme Court has annulled a ruling requiring Atresmedia and Netflix to pay 15,000 euros to Laureano Oubiña for a sex scene in the series 'Fariña'. The decision, released on Thursday, upholds artistic freedom of creation. Oubiña, a 79-year-old former drug trafficker, sued over violations of his honor, privacy, and image.
After seven years of court battles, Laureano Oubiña has lost his lawsuit against producer Bambú, Atresmedia, and Netflix over fictional sex scenes in the first episode of 'Fariña', a series that broke audience records. The Supreme Court accepted the appeal from the defendants and overturned the Pontevedra Provincial Court's ruling, which had found illegitimate interference with Oubiña's rights to honor, privacy, and image—his wife had already passed away—and set compensation at 15,000 euros.
Oubiña, a self-proclaimed former drug trafficker, initially sought 1.5 million euros and the removal of the scenes, claiming the series portrayed him negatively. His lawyer, Paladino Hernández, argued in the November 2023 trial: “Laureano Oubiña's life has considerably worsened after the broadcast of this series, as he is depicted as someone capable of taking another's life, violent, sexist, cocaine trafficker, impotent, vicious, unfaithful, impulsive, bad father, bad husband, brute, foolish, vengeful, woman abuser, ignorant, or mafioso”.
However, the public prosecutor's office requested dismissal of the claim, citing protection under the “right to freedom of creation”, which does not require the strict veracity standard of journalistic information. The Supreme Court agreed, viewing Oubiña as a public figure due to his convictions for drug trafficking, a matter of general interest. The series' insinuation of his involvement in cocaine trafficking does not illegitimately infringe his honor, as it is fiction inspired by real events.
On privacy, the high court described the scenes as brief, with clothed actors, lacking notable explicitness, and fully integrated into the narrative without decisive dramatic relevance. The average viewer understands it as fictional recreation, not a reflection of Oubiña's real life. Thus, the order to remove the first-episode scene, set in the Pazo de Baión—seized from the plaintiff due to his convictions—is revoked, and the compensation is annulled.