'Pasapalabra' experiences a historic change: goodbye to the 'rosco', hello to a new final test

BarcelonaTurning point on Pasapalabra. The Antena 3 contest will experience a historic and not particularly happy night this Thursday: it will definitively say goodbye to the rosco, the popular final test that allows contestants to access the large cash prize. The elimination is due to the ruling from late May by the Supreme Court which confirmed that the test is part of a work protected by intellectual property and that its ownership belongs to the Dutch company MC&F and not ITV, the production company that licenses the broadcast rights of the contest to Antena 3. The judicial decision implies that the channel cannot broadcast the rosco. Furthermore, to comply with the ruling, Antena 3 has also had to remove from its online platform, Atresplayer, the episodes of the contest in which the test appears, a total of 1,540 episodes.

The Supreme Court's ruling made public in May ratified the resolution of the Provincial Court of Barcelona in 2022, which obliged Antena 3 to stop broadcasting the test and concluded that the creators of the rosco were Reto Luigi Pianta and René Mauricio Loeb, who transferred their rights to MC&F. As Atresmedia, the owner group of Antena 3, appealed to the Supreme Court, from 2022 until the final judicial decision, the test has continued to be part of Pasapalabra normally.

The farewell of the rosco does not imply its total disappearance, because Telecinco has acquired the rights to this test, which will be part of a new format for which Mediaset has not yet shared any details.

While on Thursday viewers will experience the last rosco on Antena 3, on Friday they will already be able to learn about the test that will replace it. The channel has not wanted to give many clues, but Roberto Leal, the host of the contest, has assured that "it will be a great event".

The history of Pasapalabra in Spain is also the history of the competition between Telecinco and Antena 3, currently the leading channel in the Spanish state. The program, a copy of the Italian show Passaparola, landed on Spanish television in 2000. Until 2006 it was broadcast on Antena 3, but a year later it moved to Telecinco. It was part of the Mediaset channel's lineup until 2019. That year the Supreme Court forced the channel to stop broadcasting the contest after losing the lawsuit it had filed in 2010 against ITV, following a dispute with this producer. After winning in court, ITV ceded the rights to the program to Atresmedia and Antena 3 broadcast it again on May 13, 2020. Now Pasapalabra is not moving from Antena 3, but it is starting a new phase.