| Camera: | Multi-camera |
| Runtime: | 45 minutes |
| Creator: | Juana Uribe |
| Developer: | RCN Televisión |
| Producer: | Juan Pablo Posada |
| Executive Producer: | Leonardo Baron |
| Starring: | Mark Tacher & Veronica Orozco |
| Company: | RCN Televisión |
| Country: | Colombia |
| Language: | Spanish |
| Network: | RCN |
| Location: | Bogotá, Colombia
|
| Num Episodes: | 110 |
Los Protegidos (The Protected or The Sheltered) is a Colombian telenovela aired from May 6, 2008, to January 29, 2009, on Colombian TV network RCN. This telenovela is produced by Teleset and it was created as a counterweight for Caracol Televisión's new production El cartel (TV series), but it was premiered before this last one in order to get a higher impact in the viewers.
The day that Santiago Puerta (Mark Tacher) comes back from Italy, after getting a graduated degree in crime investigation, he is sure his future is brilliant, after getting his dream job in La Fiscalia (Investigation Bureau in Colombia). Finally he will be able to compensate his father, Bernardo Puerta (Carlos Barbosa), the huge effort he had put into funding his son's career as a lawyer and then as an expert in crime investigation.
In Italy, Santiago meets Lina Santana (Veronica Orozco), his better half, classmate and then his fiancée, but when he comes back to Colombia he realizes everything is not going to be as easy as he thought.
Santiago has to face Lina's father, Rogelio Santana, who is completely against the idea of his wedding with Lina. On the other hand, Santiago finds out that his father is not the same accountant, but the assistant of a dangerous man nicknamed "El Kes" (Luis Fernando Arango), who is the key man in a huge crime organization on the Colombian Caribbean.
Santiago convinces his father to betray "El Kes" so he can be back to legality, but things get complicated when Santiago's father begins a relationship with El Kes' all life lover "La Bandi" (Ana Bolena Meza), after she was badly injured by El Kes.
Now, Santiago's family with La Bandi's family has to disappear and become one family with another life completely different, to join a Witnesses Protection Program. But their hugest fear became true when El Kes escape and now he is looking for them to make them pay for betraying him.
While Lina, who has an incredible gift, being able to know things that are going to happen in the future, is sure she will find Santiago in Bogotá, so she moves there, but what she does not know is that El Kes is in Bogota, too, and he is sure that she is the ticket to find Santiago, and so Bernardo and La Bandi[1]