My career as a journalist has been mostly in EiTB, the Basque Country’s public radio and television company. I was a correspondent in Paris and Peking, and a special envoy all over the world. I also worked as newscaster in the Bilbao studios. At EiTB I worked at all times in both the Basque Country’s official languages: Spanish and Basque.
Television and Radio Reporter
My story begins in Paris
The Concorde crash straight after take-off from Charles de Gaulle airport marked the beginning of my intense television career. It was the year 2000, and I was in Paris on my first job as correspondent. I spent six years there, and was lucky enough to cover a large number of milestone television and radio news, such as the shock of far-right leader Jean Marie Le Pen reaching the second round of the presidential elections, or the death of Palestinian president Yasser Arafat in a Paris hospital.
After Paris, the entire world
During those years I also began to cover international news as a special envoy all over the world: the tsunami in the Indian Ocean and the orange revolution in the Ukraine in 2004, the bomb attacks in London in 2005, or the 2006 election victory of Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s first female president.
Back in Bilbao
In 2006 I was offered the job of presenting Teleberri, ETB 2’s evening prime time news slot. So I left Paris for Bilbao, combining my anchor job with occasional trips around the world to go on covering major international news as special envoy. One of these, in Washington in 2008, was the presidential elections won by Barack Obama.
My Asian adventure
But as time went by, I felt I still had a lot to see around the world. So in 2015 I went off again, this time to Beijing, to work as EiTB’s radio and television correspondent for Asia. This was an enormously intense experience, featuring the first red alert of pollution in Beijing, which coincided with the UN climate change summit in Paris. That year I also covered Myanmar’s first free elections in 25 years, when the people voted en masse for Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. News with such happy testimonies conveying hope is a rare occurrence, and so I must admit that my journey to the former Burma was an enormous pleasure on all counts.
During the period of almost two years I spent in Asia, I also found time to do my own travelling, and occasionally worked on some very interesting projects, where I worked as a volunteer, contributing my experience as a television reporter. Two of these projects were with the Cambodian NGO Angkor Tree School and the Thai eco-hotel Faasai. My partner and I set up the website Asian Gaude to share these experiences, and others which were a genuine source of enrichment for us.
And back in the Basque Country again
I have been back in the Basque Country since the end of 2016, combining my work as a reporter, with occasional stints as presenter and special envoy, with a parallel project of exclusive customized tours, Walk on the Basque Side
Presenter
My work as television presenter focused primarily on current affairs. In 2006 I left my job as correspondent in Paris to present Teleberri, the nine o’clock news slot, from the EiTB studios in Bilbao.
After 4 years on Teleberri, I took up the morning slot with “Egun On Euskadi”, first as newscaster and later as moderator of the current affairs debate, and conducting the daily political interview. Then came “Entrada Libre”, a daily programme of cultural and social interviews, which I directed and presented for a year. We were visited at the studios by personalities such as Concha Velasco, Leo Harlem, Eduard Punset, Ara Malikian and Maruja Torres. A blissful daily half hour I enjoyed very much indeed.
Right at the beginning of 2015, I went off to Peking as correspondent for EiTB. Now I work as a reporter in Vitoria-Gasteiz, but I present the news now and again and occasionally work as special envoy, covering events such as, for example, the fire at Notre-Dame in Paris. I love reporting right from the scene, but the magical silence of the studio has its attraction too. It is like coming back home after a long journey.
I have done thousands of reports, interviews, live link-ups … here are the links to my favourites. If you would like to see more, my Vimeo account has a much larger selection.
