The birth of Rosario Iturzaeta’s twin daughters in June 1980 is both a family tragedy and the origin of a concealed history that reshapes Amaia Salazar’s understanding of her mother and her own birth. One baby is found dead; Rosario is interrupted while pressing a cushion against the face of the other, who survives. The death is attributed to cot death, but the account that reaches the next generation is full of omissions, contradictions, and uncertain evidence.

Background and the hidden birth

The family record later consulted by Amaia lists earlier uncomplicated births: Flora in 1973 and Rosaura in 1975. For 1980, it records a natural twin birth without complications, describing both girls as apparently healthy but giving neither a name. That bland entry sits uneasily beside the family’s silence: Amaia and her sisters were never told that another child had been born, and the twins’ records do not explain what became of either baby.

The documentary trail offers a partial, not definitive, account. A death certificate identifies a newborn daughter of Juan Salazar and Rosario Iturzaeta and gives cot death as the cause. The term was commonly used for sudden infant death syndrome, but the certificate does not resolve the circumstances Amaia later investigates. The family also remembers that the dead child’s coffin was closed; relatives attended the burial without seeing the body. What looks like a settled entry in a register therefore conceals a death whose cause, handling, and final resting place remain in question.

The birth and the confrontation

On June 23, Rosario stands over the twins after giving birth. When Juan enters the bedroom, she is pressing a small satin cushion against the face of one baby. He cries out and knocks her away. The infant immediately begins to cry, while Rosario, weakened by labor, lies on the bed without speaking or protesting. The doctor checks the child and confirms that she is alive. Juan then turns to the other cradle: the second girl is motionless, and he realizes she is already dead.

The two cradles establish a stark contrast, but they do not supply a complete explanation. Juan has directly witnessed Rosario holding the cushion over the surviving baby’s face, yet the death of the other twin has a different and unresolved history. The scene records his recognition of the death, not its cause. Neither the birth record nor the later certificate fills that gap.

A death recast as cot death

In a later scene dated June 23, Juan recalls what he saw and challenges Fina Hidalgo’s attempt to soften it. Fina suggests that Rosario may only have been putting the cushion beneath the baby’s head. Juan insists that it had been over the child’s face. Manuel Hidalgo, who has examined the dead infant, says there are no signs of violence and that apparent asphyxia could be cot death, which commonly occurs in newborns during their first hours. Fina invokes the risk of involving the police and of destroying both the family and her brother’s career; she also says he failed to treat symptoms he had noticed in Rosario.

The competing accounts are not equivalent. Juan’s testimony describes what he saw; Fina’s explanation recasts that observation, while Manuel’s medical statement leaves room for cot death rather than establishing it as the cause. The decision to use that diagnosis turns uncertainty into an official conclusion. Manuel writes “Sudden infant death syndrome (cot death)” on a death certificate, then vomits after looking again at the dead child’s face, which is bruised and shows redness on the nose consistent with pressure. The certificate records a cause, but the scene makes clear how fragile—and compromised—that conclusion is.

The child taken away

On the morning of June 24, Juan feeds the surviving baby, whose strength at the bottle gives him a moment of relief. The dead twin remains in a second cradle in the sitting room. Rosario, dressed and prepared to leave, tells him she will go to San Sebastián to arrange the burial, while he stays to care for the girls and attend to the bakery. She refuses his plea to accompany her.

A taxi from Pamplona is already waiting. Rosario lifts the dead child and wraps her carefully in a fine shawl, holding her as if she were alive. She says she will return the next day, but Juan turns away rather than watch her leave with the baby. His action leaves him caring for the living child while Rosario takes the dead one out of the household. The burial is thus separated from the family’s view, and the closed coffin later remembered by relatives extends that separation into the public record.

Discovery and evidentiary limits

Decades afterward, Amaia learns that the 1980 record was for a twin birth and that a newborn daughter was officially registered as having died of cot death. She also discovers that her mother concealed the birth from the family, that the birth documentation contains irregularities, and that the circumstances of the death conflict with the evidence surrounding Rosario’s actions. Her relatives’ recollection of a closed coffin cannot establish what was inside it or where Rosario ultimately buried the child.

The investigation also brings in bones recovered in strange circumstances. Forensic examination dates them to approximately 150 years earlier and identifies them as belonging to a newborn; routine DNA testing finds a 25 percent match with Amaia, a result confirmed by testing at multiple laboratories. That match creates a striking family connection, but it does not, by itself, identify the remains as the twin: the reported age and sex of the bones do not neatly fit the identity Amaia is trying to establish. The evidence makes the family history more suspicious without resolving every contradiction.

The event’s force lies in the collision between witnessed action and official explanation. Juan sees one baby saved from the cushion and another already dead; a medical certificate turns the latter’s death into cot death; Rosario carries the body away; and the family’s memory preserves little beyond a closed coffin and a concealed birth. When Amaia reconstructs the episode, the gaps are not incidental: they are the means by which a twin’s existence and death were hidden, and the reason the past remains only partly recoverable.