De Que Ha Muerto Oihane Mateos: Cancer Claims One of Spain’s Most Respected Broadcast Journalists

De Que Ha Muerto Oihane Mateos: Cancer Claims One of Spain’s Most Respected Broadcast Journalists

EITB is the Basque public broadcaster, and Oihane Mateos worked there for more than 20 years. She did something that not many journalists can do: she stayed relevant at every stage. She started out in radio, then moved on to TV and hosted major news shows. Eventually, she was in charge of digitizing a public media organization that, like most, was still trying to figure out what journalism should look like on a phone screen. She passed away on August 8 because of problems caused by her cancer. She was 45 years old.

Mateos was born in 1981 in the small town of Ibarra in the province of Gipuzkoa. He got his start in journalism thru a scholarship at Euskadi Irratia, the radio station of EITB. For her, it was that kind of entry point that helped her understand what the job was really about: not performance or platform, but the work of finding a story and telling it clearly. After that, she moved to Euskal Telebista, the TV side, and became well-known on Gaur Egun and Teleberri, two of the longest-running news shows in Basque broadcasting. She was also the host of the political talk show De Boca en Boca on ETB2. This job required a different set of skills, like patience, rhythm, and the ability to keep a conversation going without turning into background noise.

From 2017 to 2019, she had a column in ATARIA, a Basque-language newspaper, where she talked about local news and everyday events that don’t always make it into the news. Small things like this show how she saw journalism—not just as something that happened in studios, but also on the street. Reading the tributes that have been written about her since she died makes me think that her balance of being grounded and ambitious was what made her truly liked and not just professionally respected.

In 2022, she became head of digital news at EITB, which would be her last job there. The timing was right. Public broadcasters all over Europe were having a hard time with a generation of viewers who had stopped watching regular TV and instead got their news from social media, messaging apps, and short videos that didn’t look much like a traditional evening news show. Mateos was hired to learn how EITB could reach those people without giving up on what a public broadcaster should be.

Part of the answer was Orain, a digital news project that combined news stories in Spanish and Basque, vertical video formats, live streaming, and mobile alerts. In 2023, EITB released Orain Berriak, a news app that works on WhatsApp and is made for people who like to get information in short bursts instead of at set times. This project was given the Platinum Customer Experience Award in 2024 for being the best IT project in public administration. It was recognized by people outside of journalism, which may have been its own kind of validation. The full Orain.eus platform came out in June 2025. It had vertical video navigation and real-time content made just for mobile users.

It’s still not clear how much of that bigger vision she created herself versus coordinated, but people who worked with her have said the same thing over and over: she was a leader who got things done without making it feel like work. Laura Garrido, a deputy in the Basque parliament who met Mateos during campaign coverage and interviews, wrote, “She made everything seem easy.” That comment came up in a lot of the tributes that came in on Saturday nite. It was about ease, warmth, professionalism, and a smile that never seemed to go away, even when things were hard.

A famous Basque comedian and longtime coworker, Kike Amonarriz, wrote that they had lost not only a great worker but also a truly good and happy person way too soon. She was kind, smart, and a great worker, according to Naiara Pinedo. Adela González, who started her career at Radio Euskadi and now works as a host at RTVE, talked about her grief in a way that was honest and reflected the shared sense of loss in Basque media.

There is something more than the usual professional obituary about seeing how people reacted over the course of Sunday. The people who are remembering Mateos are not talking about a job. Every time they talk about someone they worked with, they keep using the same word: generosa. Being kind. It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of journalism, which is a tough job that can be brutal at times. But the fact that it keeps coming up with her makes me think it wasn’t just a nice thing to do.

EITB sent their condolences to her family, friends, and coworkers in a statement that said her career was deeply connected to the organization and the information it provides. She leaves behind a digital platform that is still getting started, a team that she worked hard to build, and a body of work that has grown from radio booths to the phones of people who have never had a TV