Berasategui—Antonio Garrido

Berasategui’s relationship with Antonio Garrido turns the desecrations at the church in Arizkun into more than Garrido’s isolated acts of violence: Garrido serves a master, and Berasategui regards that service as part of a plan. Their connection is marked by unequal power, the exploitation of vulnerable people, and a division between the visible perpetrator and the figure directing events.

Service and Control

In custody, Berasategui taunted Garrido about having attempted suicide before finishing his work, framing Garrido’s actions as service to a master rather than as independent crimes. Garrido answered that he had served well. The exchange makes explicit the hierarchy between them: Garrido understood himself as an agent whose value depended on carrying out another person’s purpose, while Berasategui spoke as if he could judge the success of that service.

The Desecrations as a Mission

Garrido’s service to Berasategui took visible form in the repeated desecrations at the church in Arizkun. When the evidence of those crimes was later raised in Berasategui’s presence, the charge was specific: Garrido had admitted carrying out the profanations, which damaged church property and involved human remains taken from a family cemetery. Berasategui’s radiant smile, fixed on Amaia Salazar rather than his increasingly confused lawyer, made the allegation seem less like an unwelcome disclosure than a performance he wanted her to recognize.

The exchange in custody exposes the human cost of that mission. Berasategui mocked Garrido for trying to kill himself before completing his work and invoked the poor, abused child Garrido had used to damage the church at night. Garrido did not deny the exploitation; he insisted that the boy had liked participating. That defense shifts attention from the destruction itself to the relationship Berasategui’s enterprise enabled: Garrido acted as an organizer and user of another vulnerable person, while Berasategui judged his conduct in terms of service and usefulness. The boy’s abuse is not incidental to the exchange; it is the means by which the mission reaches beyond Garrido’s own actions.

Garrido’s attempted suicide also marks a change in what Berasategui expected from him. He had apparently tried to kill himself because capture was supposed to trigger that response. Once arrested, however, his mission had changed: the suicide attempt had failed, and Berasategui believed Garrido was now buying time. The possibility that the prisoner still had something to provide made his survival useful to the plan, even after the original course of action had been interrupted.

A Signature Across Separate Crimes

The investigation tied Garrido’s work to a wider pattern without treating every act of violence as his own. In the reviewed cases, the perpetrators shared familiar features of domestic abuse: they were related to their victims, had subjected them to prolonged violence, and were often affected by alcohol or drugs and prone to impulsive aggression. What broke that pattern was the postmortem removal of the same arm in each case, with the limb never recovered. The investigators considered whether the mutilation was a copied practice, but details of the amputation in Johana Márquez’s case had been withheld from the press. The repeated, distinctive act therefore pointed toward a single operator behind crimes committed by different men.

Jasón Medina’s account clarified the division of roles. He confessed to raping and strangling Johana, then assaulting her body, but was perplexed when questioned about the missing arm. After killing her impulsively, he had left to fetch a rope so he could imitate a crime he had read about; when he returned, the arm was gone. The discovery shifted the question from who had committed the murder to who had been present to claim its trophy. Because Medina had not planned the killing, the person who removed the arm could not simply have been waiting for a scheduled crime: the investigators concluded that the offender had been following him. In that reconstruction, Berasategui’s influence depended not only on recruiting perpetrators but on identifying and tracking violent men closely enough to exploit an unpredictable opening.

A recurring inscription strengthened the linkage. In the Logroño case, the killer died by suicide in his cell, leaving the same word on the wall in the same unusual spelling found in a mark associated with the other crimes. Its repetition, alongside the missing arm, functioned as a personal signature rather than a detail explained by the perpetrators’ shared circumstances. The evidence thus connected Berasategui to a pattern that crossed individual murders: other men supplied the immediate violence, while a hidden operator repeated the identifying act and sign.

The material trail also connected Garrido’s operations to a concealed base. A search of the old pilgrims’ hospital where the suspect had been hiding uncovered food and provisions suggesting he had stayed there for at least fifteen days and expected to remain longer. Stored upstairs were old hospital furnishings and medical instruments, including scalpels described as identical to the one examined by Doctor San Martín. The find gave practical force to Garrido’s promise to take Nuria Otaño to a hospital: the abandoned building held the tools that could serve the mutilations. Berasategui’s relationship with Garrido was therefore revealed through both command and infrastructure—a servant carrying out desecrations and a hidden setting equipped to support the larger scheme.

Evidence and the Shape of the Bond

The novel establishes the relationship through converging evidence rather than a full account of how it began. Garrido’s admission that he carried out the desecrations at the church in Arizkun, together with the use of human remains taken from a family cemetery, anchors his role in specific acts. Berasategui’s language of master and servant supplies the hierarchy; the investigation’s reconstruction of a wider pattern supplies the inference that Garrido’s work belonged to a larger design. The distinction matters: Garrido is identified as the direct perpetrator of the desecrations, while Berasategui emerges as the figure who gives those acts their purpose and place in a scheme.

When the desecrations are raised in court, Berasategui’s attention stays on Amaia Salazar, even as his lawyer struggles to understand the relevance of the evidence. His conspicuous smile and invitation for her reaction turn the allegation into a challenge. The scene does not provide a detailed account of their arrangements or a straightforward confession to every element of the scheme; instead, it makes the imbalance legible through conduct. Garrido’s admitted actions are the visible record of service, while Berasategui’s response suggests that the record itself is part of what he wants Amaia to see.