It’s been three months since the actress earned a permanent place in the film industry thanks to I’m Juani, Verónica Echegui, died of cancer at the age of 42. An illness that struck the Madrid interpreter, who in 2022 won the Goya for best fiction short film as director, screenwriter and co-producer of the terrifying Wolf Totem, carried with great discretion. After his death on August 24th, there were countless messages of mourning from operators in the sector. Particularly touching was the letter published by the actor Álex García, who shared his life with her for 13 years. Sergio Peris-Mencheta, still recovering from a bone marrow transplant due to leukemia, said goodbye to his partner a day after her death: “It hurts us that you are not here,” he wrote on the account on which he has more than 90,000 followers.
Now, the actor and director, who received the Order of Civil Merit in Los Angeles in August in recognition of his survival and career, wanted to pay tribute to his friend with a long dedication on his Instagram profile. “…And I find this photo that I stole from her a few years ago in Los Angeles. And I kept Vero in my mind for days. Awake, in dreams and in sleep. And I get memories of her always going out of the ordinary. She undresses. Always laughing, always with laughter as her flag. It’s the scene I have of her. I don’t imagine her correctly, wow,” the dedication begins.
“With her the routine was always broken and life appeared, damn it. It was a constant surprise. With her the ordinary was ruined. As if she had come into this world to make the most of the 40 years she would live. As if her higher self already knew she would be a shooting star and asked her a question. all inclusive at all times, no matter how daily. As if he had incarnated to give us all a lesson on how to live life”, he writes. And he continues: “Even in the world photographic services He didn’t pose, he played in another league, he gave the impression of thinking: ‘Don’t take this so seriously, in 100 years we’ll all be bald’. And that way of looking, as if with a telescopic viewfinder behind which one imagined a wonderland. He played in another league. As if he came into the world only to remember what it means to live, and to laugh a little at the seriousness, the worries, the stresses… as if with his telescopic eyes he already knew more than anyone else that we are only passing through, and that we are not as important as we live…”.
Unlike Echegui, the actor has gone public with the entire process since he was diagnosed with cancer in early 2024. Earlier this year he published the book 730 dHeysuch as, Illness as a mirror of timein which he reveals those things he believes are essential to living life to the fullest. “I don’t change myself for the Sergio I was before the illness. I don’t advise anyone to go through what I went through, but once I’m through it I face it to the fullest and also its consequences. My whole body hurts, but I got used to it and accepted the pain. “The discomforts push me to take care of my body, they push me to take care of myself at all times. Is what’s happening to me bad? Sure, she’s a bitch, but bless this bitch,” the actor said in an interview with THE COUNTRY.
In her tribute to the actress, Peris-Mencheta concludes the dedication by honoring the moment in her friend’s life: “Yes, Echegui was the paradigm of the desire to live without restrictions. At all times. As if it were her hallmark. As if she discovered at any moment a toy shop or an amusement park. As if she had no time to waste on elevator conversations… I can’t imagine her in an elevator having a conversation in an elevator. I always imagine her entering smoothly. An elevator with a neighbor glanders but she brings up a topic and it’s not about ‘talking about the weather.’ It’s that she’s noticed something that only she would notice, and how a girl gets her attention, and how a girl in a toy store mentions glanders to her neighbor and something breaks and that neighbor turns out to not be so morbid. And it ends: “Note: Never has a post had the word life in it so much.”
