Industry mourns death of Spanish actress Verónica Echegui aged 42

The Spanish film industry is reeling from the news of the death of actress Verónica Echegui on August 25 from cancer aged 42.

Discovered by Bigas Luna in 2006’s Yo Soy La Juani, Madrid-born Verónica Echegui went on to appear in nearly 30 features, as well as in national and international series and stage productions.

Yo Soy La Juani saw Echegui deliver a strikingly fresh and energetic performance as a working-class Barcelona teenager —a “choni” in Spanish slang— living in the city’s outskirts, and determined to become an actress.

Her subsequent credits included Marcos Carnevale’s Make A Wish (2007), Peris Romano and Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s 8 Citas (2008), and Belén Macías’ El Patio De Mi Cárcel, produced by Almodovar brothers in 2008.

In 2009, she was named an EFP European Shooting Star at the Berlinale.

Echegui later worked with Icíar Bollaín in Katmandú, Un Espejo En El Cielo (2011) and Eduardo Chapero Jackson in Verbo (2011).

Her international roles included Mabrouk El Mechri’s The Cold Light of Day (2012), Roberto Sneider’s You’re Killing Me Susana (2016) alongside Gael García Bernal, and Jonathan Mostow’s The Hunter’s Prayer (2017).

Echegui’s TV work included Sky TV drama Fortitude and FX’s Trust. Her final role was in Ciudad De Sombras, a Netflix thriller series produced by Arcadia and directed by Jorge Torregrossa, now in post-production.

Behind the camera, she won a Goya award as director of her short film Tótem Loba in 2022. After that success, she expressed her ambition to build a career as a filmmaker, attending courses such as the Directing Actors School in Los Angeles and programmes focused on visual storytelling and was working on the script for her first feature.