Antonio Elegido has not been a regular character on television for years, but for a decade he was one of the faces most loved by viewers. The Numbers and Letters teacher took all that jumble of characters and built words, in long conversations with the contestants.
His bohemian appearance, with long gray hair, and his sublime knowledge, covered in a tranquility that calmed the nerves on set, hooked thousands of Spaniards, first on La 2 and later on Telemadrid.
However, for several years now the professor has been waging a battle against the Aisge, the entity that manages the intellectual property rights of actors and performers. At the end of his career in Figures and Letters, Chosen claimed that his work on the program be considered an “acting performance” and was paid as such in the years that he performed his role, between 2002 and 2012.
Aisge’s partner since 2012, Chosen argued that he had received compensation as an actor for another program in which he “played an identical role, Pull me by the tongue.” For its part, the entity considered that the teacher’s intervention in Figures and Letters did not correspond to the interpretation of a character but to “an expert in letters, as he himself presents himself to public opinion.”
After an accolade in the Commercial Court number 9 of Madrid, in March 2019, which confirmed that the character of the professor was, indeed, “an artistic representation”, he received the first no from justice: the Provincial Court of Madrid revoked the first sentence with the argument that Antonio Chosen “did not create any character, but rather interprets and represents himself within coordinates agreed with the producer and the direction of the program.”
To justify the ruling, the court considered proven the knowledge of Chosen, with a university degree in letters, and that he does not “externalize” an artistic creation as it did in Tírame de la lengua, where he played a professor from the time of Cervantes for the children’s audience.
The contract for Chosen with the production company Cifras y letras carried with it the commitment to “present in the media a forgiving image that was not incompatible with the profile” of the professor, also in his physical appearance. Thus, her partner in the program, the expert in figures Doña Enriqueta, was prohibited from playing a role as a prostitute in Aquí no hay quien viva, while she was authorized to appear in a chapter of Cuéntame as an expert in figures who sang.
A few days ago the professor received his second refusal. The Supreme Court, to which the judicial ruling had been appealed, shelved the matter: it did not admit his appeal and confirmed the judgment of the Provincial Court of Madrid.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project