Virginia Yagüe, elected new president of DAMA

Yagüe, who succeeds Borja Cobeaga, has an extensive professional career as a screenwriter and creator of television series.

Curro Royo Fernández has been elected vice-chairman and Estrella García Albacete, general secretary of the new Board of Directors of DAMA, elected by vote among the members on 17th June.

The new Board of Directors of DAMA elected last Friday, in its first meeting, Virginia Yagüe as president of the entity. She succeeds Borja Cobeaga, president from 2014 to 2022.

Virginia Yagüe has an extensive professional career in the creation and scriptwriting of television series, such as La Señora, 14 de Abril: La República and Amar en Tiempos Revueltos. In film, she won the Biznaga de Oro at the Malaga Festival for the script of the feature film Els Nens Salvatges. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the CIMA association and of the Board of Directors of the Film Academy, as a member specialising in screenwriting.

The Board, made up of ten women and five men, has also appointed Curro Royo Fernández and Estrella García Albacete to the posts of Vice-President and General Secretary, respectively. Completing the Board of Directors, which is renewed every four years, are Alba Lucío Calderón, Alejandro Hernández Díaz, Ángeles González-Sinde Reig, Azucena Rodríguez (La Rubia), Begoña Ballester-Olmos Molins, Coral Cruz Pacheco, Diana Rojo Martín, Eva Garcés Rebollo, Josep Llurba Naval, Pablo Barrera Martín-Meras, Paloma Rando Béjar and Patxi Amezcua Hernández.

Their election is the result of elections among all the members of DAMA that were held, online and in person, between the 11th and 17th of June. At this juncture, the 2.108 members of the entity were able to choose, among twenty candidates, the fifteen members of the Board, all in all, in elections that reached a turnout of 27.9%, well above previous one.

General Assembly

In addition to electing a new Board, DAMA’s General Assembly approved the Management Report and Annual Accounts, as well as the Transparency Report for the 2021 financial year, with no votes against it.

DAMA closed last year with 1,837 members, that is, 11.46% more than in 2020, and nowadays, it counts with 2.108 members. What is more, last year, royalty collections reached €23.4 million, 55.1% of which came from digital TV operators, with strong growth in collections from private copying and video-on-demand platforms. In 2022, the entity expects to exceed 27.2 million euros in revenue, thanks, among other factors, to the recovery of cinemas and the increase regarding revenue from video-on-demand platforms.

On the international side, DAMA manages, through reciprocal agreements, the Spanish rights of audiovisual entities in 40 other countries, and has just been elected to the Board of Directors of CISAC, the world’s leading network of authors’ societies for music, drama, visual arts, audiovisual and literature.