The survival of the forbidden love in television fiction: “Romeo and Juliet” in contemporary Spanish series for youth

This chapter is concerned with the study of television fiction targeting young people and produced in Spain. The aim is to detect the romantic love stereotypes that may be present in these series and the way they are expressed. It uses as a case study two highly popular teen drama series that were first shown in 2011: Los protegidos and El barco. The narrative analysis indicates that romantic love survives in modern storylines and is still subject to perpetuating age-old myths and gender stereotypes as a dominant masculinity and a submissive femininity despite the requirements of healthy interpersonal relationships in societies of equality.