Rioja Alavesa is the home region of Ritxi’s family winery and, after the deaths of the twins, part of the setting for the life he and Alice build away from public attention. The region connects the family business Ritxi inherited to the couple’s move to nearby Elciego and their effort to continue together after the trial.

The family winery

Ritxi tells Alice that after studying in Paris and Washington he took charge of the family company, a small winery in Rioja Alavesa. His father had run it until his sudden death, which had occurred a year before Ritxi met Alice. The business had belonged to the family for five generations, and Alice understands that this history carries an expectation of a sixth generation.

The winery is the visible core of a wider business. Ritxi does not initially tell Alice about his strategic investments in wind energy and boutique hotels. The contrast between the small, inherited winery and those newer ventures gives the family enterprise a dual character: rooted in a long succession, but expanding beyond wine.

A base for life after the trial

After the twins’ deaths, Ritxi does not seek the harshest possible sentence for Alice. Instead, he works to keep her out of prison, a choice that leaves the narrator searching for an explanation beyond the standard accounts of grief. Once the couple remain together, they leave the city and settle in a small house in Elciego, near Ritxi’s work.

Their new home does not end their connection to the legal and medical systems. Every two weeks they travel to Vitoria to sign at court, Ritxi accompanying Alice; in the same period, they fly to Barcelona for appointments with a prominent psychiatrist, where Alice begins treatment for psychosis. The repeated journeys place their private life in Elciego between judicial supervision and psychiatric care.

Narrative significance

Rioja Alavesa enters the account through practical ties rather than a scenic description: it is where the family winery stands, where Ritxi’s inherited responsibilities are anchored, and near where he and Alice make a home after the trial. That geography gives material form to the couple’s attempt at a future, while the narrator’s questions about Ritxi’s decision to stay with Alice remain unresolved. The region is therefore less an answer to the mystery of his choice than the setting in which its consequences become an everyday life.