Victoria-Gastaster

Vitoria-Gasteiz is the setting for the Narrator’s first encounter with Armentia, the affluent neighborhood associated with the deaths of Alice Espanet’s twins, and becomes part of the practical geography of her later attendance at the trial. The city’s significance lies in this contrast: the Narrator arrives first for an award ceremony with her family, then approaches a house marked by loss, while the court proceedings turn travel between the city and Bilbao into a repeated routine of observation and note-taking.

First Visit to Armentia

In November of the year of the deaths, the Narrator travelled to Vitoria-Gasteiz to receive the Euskadi award. Niclas changed his afternoon classes with a colleague so that the family could attend the ceremony; the Narrator’s father planned to make the journey separately. Her mother could not find an affordable plane ticket, and the Narrator reassured her that the ceremony was only a formality and that they could celebrate on her next visit.

An hour before the ceremony, despite the severe weather, the Narrator persuaded Niclas to make a brief detour to Armentia. Rain swept across the road and shook the trees, but parking was easy, as was identifying the house, which had been extensively photographed when the deaths took place. Its location placed it beside a meadow used once a year for a popular romería, near a beautiful Romanesque basilica and within reasonable distance of other villas.

The House and Its Surroundings

The house stood closed and empty, although someone kept its garden in good order. Its design seemed composed and self-contained: a symmetrical, imposing building with an upper floor faced in glass, now covered by grey blinds, and a lower form resembling a traditional Basque farmhouse, with exposed timber and a long, pitched roof. In the rain, it appeared almost untouched by the events associated with it, as though everything inside had gone according to its designers’ plans. That outward composure sharpened the contrast between the home’s polished appearance and the deaths the Narrator names plainly: two babies drowned in a bathtub in the height of summer.

The City as a Route of Witnessing

The visit to Armentia was brief and fitted around the award ceremony, but it established a physical connection between Vitoria-Gasteiz and the case that the Narrator had initially tried to ignore. By then the flowers and teddy bears left at the house had begun to fade, while public and media attention was already receding. The city’s association with the case therefore includes both the house as a site of mourning and the early signs of how quickly that mourning could become less visible.

Later, attending the trial became routine for the Narrator. She arrived punctually, sat in the sixth row, avoided journalists, and filled half of a black notebook by the fourth day. The hearings generally ended around two or half past, after which she travelled back to Bilbao; the journeys cost her money in fuel, tolls, and parking. These repeated trips made Vitoria-Gasteiz part of the labor of witnessing: she watched the proceedings, took notes, and gradually understood the trial as a contest between competing stories rather than a simple passage from evidence to truth.