Sunday, August 14, Cádiz-Real Sociedad at 5:30 p.m., and Monday 15, at the same time, Athletic-Mallorca. Mark both football matches in red, because they are going to go down in the history of television in our country. This weekend begins LaLiga 22-23, and it comes with important news in its broadcasts. The irruption of DAZN and the production of the Movistar matches by the entity led by Tebas have caused a tsunami of changes in the communication teams. News that, finally, give way to women in the field of storytelling. From this season on, a couple of the ten games of each day will be narrated by Alba Oliveros and Andrea Segura, the first two Spanish journalists who will narrate First Division matches on television.
“If I’m honest, I found out a little over two weeks ago, when I got back from vacation. The League did a casting with narrations from last season and they liked the one they heard from me Malaga-Burgos of the last day, which was unified. When they told me I started jumping and screaming like crazy, and the truth is that I still don’t believe it. I am not aware of what this means, ”says Alba, only 27 years old and a native of Valladolid.
«I have been narrating on DAZN for two years, more men’s football than women’s. The first season, Championship, Premier and Copa del Rey, and last season I combined the Premier with the Women UEFA Champions League. One day I received a message that they were counting on me for the LaLiga, and a little while ago is when I had the official confirmation. I was with my roommate and I remember that I was paralyzed for a few minutes. It’s a dream I didn’t know I could fulfill. In fact, I have not accepted it yet, “says Andrea, 28, and born in Campello (Alicante).
Oliveros comes from a humble family in San Miguel del Arroyo, a small town in Valladolid with just 700 inhabitants. There, his grandfather ran a bakery, and his father started working there when he was 6 years old. With 8 he was already driving making the distribution. As an adult, Alba’s father moved to Valladolid and there he set up his own bakery with Oliveros’s mother: “As a child I helped him and I remember listening at four in the morning in the delivery car to the rebroadcasts of the nightly programs Of the radio. Above all, that of of the brunette. That’s where my love of football began. When he found out that I was going to narrate in Primera he told me something that I will never forget: ‘thank goodness you didn’t listen to me with the bakery’. He had to close it for health reasons and neither my sister nor I wanted to continue his legacy »,
Andrea He grew up in a soccer family. Her grandfather Luis played for Hércules, her father too, and also in Segunda with Levante, and she herself and her twin sister played since they were five years old: «I told my grandfather, who is pachucho, at the residence and he he began to tell all the people there. He told me a long time ago that he had to be a voice of football. I get emotional when I think about it.”
Alba debuts with Cádiz-Real Sociedad in Movistar+, and will also narrate a Second match each day. To begin with, tonight’s match between Levante and Huesca: «I grew up listening to Carlos Martínez, Miguel Ángel Román, José Sanchís, Manolo Lama and many others. Also to Andrés Montes, in the games of the Sixth. We never heard a female voice and that, unconsciously, made us think that it was not possible, but just as there are women presenters and women on the pitch, why can’t they be narrating? A colleague from the university wrote to me thanking me for paving the way for those who come after. We are going to break a ceiling and normalize that a woman can narrate in First. That makes me happy”
Andrea will be released 24 hours later than Alba. He will do it on DAZN with an Athletic-Mallorca: «I had voices in my head, like Marta Casas, who narrates basketball on the radio. I liked how she did it. The first games I heard myself narrate sounded very strange to me. It was difficult to listen to me and consider that I didn’t have to sound like a man. It’s a different record, but it doesn’t have to be worse. Like the men, Alba and I will make mistakes, but we will try to do the best we can. If there are no opportunities, if windows are not opened for us, it is impossible to know if women can narrate. If you don’t see that you can be something, you don’t dream of being.” Alba Oliveros and Andrea Seguratwo women’s voices that this weekend will go down in the history of television in Spain.
