Antonio Garrido

Antonio Garrido’s role connects Nuria Otaño’s private struggle to escape an abusive marriage with the investigation into the desecrations at the church in Arizkun. He is first identified as the man who terrorized Nuria and later as an adult accomplice who encouraged Beñat Zaldúa to act.

Identity and Background

Garrido is Nuria Otaño’s former husband. Her sister, Ana Otaño, explains that the family distrusted him from their first meeting, but Nuria was strongly attached to him. Within months of their marriage, he persuaded her to move with him to Murcia for work. Their calls grew less frequent, and Nuria seemed changed when her family did speak with her. Garrido gradually helped isolate her from them; the estrangement lasted two years, during which he kept her confined in his home and abused her.

Nuria eventually escaped and sought help. After four months in hospital, she moved back into her parents’ house, where she lived with Ana. She was still recovering and, because of agoraphobia, could not go beyond the garden fence. Garrido’s return threatened that fragile recovery: about a month before the confrontation at the house, he was released from prison on a judge’s temporary permit and called Nuria to say that he would come for her.

The confrontation and identification

After leaving prison on temporary release, Garrido went to the house where Nuria was staying with Ana. He forced his way in through a bedroom window. Nuria was waiting inside and fired at him as he entered, wounding him; he escaped from the house, leaving a trail that led toward the access road. The police treated the scene as an urgent search: Amaia and her colleagues planned to contact hospitals, pharmacies, and emergency posts, anticipating that Garrido would need medical attention.

The incident reversed the positions of pursuer and pursued. Garrido had spent years isolating Nuria from her family, and his return followed a phone call warning that he would come for her. Now the police were looking for him while Nuria remained at home, where Ana described the attack and the history behind it. The investigators also learned a detail that could help identify Garrido: he had lost the first sections of three fingers on his right hand in a workplace accident involving a metal guillotine.

Role in the Desecrations and the Investigation

The investigation widened beyond the attack on Nuria when Beñat Zaldúa identified Garrido as the adult who had contacted him by email and encouraged him to turn his advocacy into action. Beñat had initially hoped the publicity would draw attention to the history of the agotes, but became frightened when human bones appeared. He denied involvement with the remains and with the latest desecration, in which an electric loader was driven into the church wall in Arizkun. His account instead placed Garrido behind the campaign that linked the church incidents to the broader case.

Garrido’s capture did not immediately end his capacity to affect the investigation. He was found hiding in an old pilgrims’ hospital and attempted to take his own life as officers entered; Inspector Montes intervened, and an ambulance was called. During questioning, Garrido presented himself as having served an unnamed master well. Amaia Salazar read his repeated questions about the time as deliberate stalling: she believed his work had ended when Nuria no longer behaved as expected, and that the church desecrations had likewise ended once Beñat was under interrogation. Garrido had been expected to die before police could detain him; when that failed, Amaia suspected that keeping the officers occupied was meant to give someone elsewhere time to act. The immediate target of that possible plan was not yet known.

Garrido’s later admission confirmed his responsibility for the desecrations at the church in Arizkun. The incidents had damaged church property and involved human remains taken from a family cemetery, extending his role from the private violence against Nuria into a campaign of deliberate public desecration. The two strands of the investigation therefore converged on him: Beñat’s testimony exposed the adult influence behind the acts, while Garrido’s admission established him as their author.

Narrative Role and Unresolved Agency

Garrido brings two investigations into contact without making their larger design fully transparent. His actions are established at different levels: Beñat Zaldúa identifies him as the adult who encouraged the desecrations, and Garrido later admits he carried them out; in the separate attack at Nuria’s home, the evidence identifies him as the intruder she had been threatened by. Yet his reference to an unnamed master, together with Amaia Salazar’s suspicion that someone else was meant to act while the police were kept busy, places limits on what his capture explains. The investigation can attribute the desecrations to Garrido while still leaving open who directed the broader plan and what its intended next move was.

That gap gives Garrido a double significance: he is an accountable perpetrator, but also a subordinate whose actions may have served a purpose beyond what investigators had yet uncovered. His expected suicide would have prevented his detention; when it failed, the repeated attention to time suggested that delay itself mattered. The resulting uncertainty does not erase the established facts of his responsibility. Instead, it distinguishes the acts the case has solved from the agency that remains concealed behind them.