Asturian regional television and the Conexión Asturias program are in mourning. This Thursday a member of his team died suddenly in a terrible traffic accident. It was 1:35 p.m. when María Bretón collided head-on with another vehicle, instantly losing her life.
The event occurred at kilometer 2 of the AS-116 highway during the journey that the journalist was taking to go to her job, at the production company Proima Zebrastur, in the Olloniego industrial estate. There, one of the most watched programs in the Asturian Autonomous Community (TPA) is broadcast daily and her colleagues, still in shock, wanted to announce the terrible news live and send a loving message to the family of María Bretón.
At 6:33 p.m. this Thursday, August 17, the presenter Marco Rodríguez, accompanied by part of the Conexión Asturias team, started the program announcing a terrible loss, that of his partner María Bretón Fernández, content coordinator.
“Today we do not have a rundown because María, on the way to our newsroom, has left us in an accident, we are dismayed, in a state of shock,” he communicated with a broken voice. “Conexión Asturias was born 17 years ago with the purpose of entertaining them, to amuse them, and today it is impossible. We have not assimilated what has happened yet, but you will understand that we cannot entertain you today because we are very, very hurt. And, in fact, we still do not realize what has happened, ”she explained.
Immediately afterwards, Rodríguez apologized to the towns and parties where they planned to be to carry out the program and that, by communicating the terrible news of the death of their partner, they have understood the situation.
“We always start with a very good afternoon and very loud, today is the worst day in the history of this program. We never thought that we could start a Conexión Asturias with one less of our colleagues, with one less of our family members”, pointed out the journalist, who announced that the program would be very different from the usual one and that this concept of “family” was something that María, the deceased, always used to refer to her fellow program members.
The last words of Conexión Asturias were addressed to the journalist’s family: “If those of us here, in control, are her professional family, there are some friends and blood family that we cannot imagine how they are doing.” Finally, Marco Rodríguez said: “The most difficult program of Conexión Asturias begins here.”
The messages of condolence for the loss of the Asturian worker have not stopped since then. Among them, to highlight, that of the President of the Principality of Asturias, Adrián Barbón, who wrote a message through his social networks after learning the “terrible news”: “I share your pain, the immense pain, that you now feel. A hug to all the people who make up the @conexiontpa team and my emotional memory of María Bretón, who died in a traffic accident”.
María Bretón, a 42-year-old native of Avilés, studied Audiovisual Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid, did an internship in the press services of the European Parliament and for ten years worked for Proima Zebrastur, the production company that provides its services to televisions such as that of the Principality of Asturias and, specifically, to Conexión Asturias.
The journalist had been the content coordinator of this highly popular program in the Asturian region for just over five years. She previously carried out the same task in other magazines of the chain such as Spend the afternoon or De hoy no pasa.
