Entrambasaguas is a small settlement in Burgos that becomes an investigative stop for Amaia Salazar: there she speaks with a woman who had long expected a victim’s partner to kill her. The snowy village seems at first almost like a Christmas postcard, but the interview turns its domestic spaces into a record of anticipated violence and a source of clues.

Setting and Approach

Amaia’s navigator places Entrambasaguas 43 kilometers and a 50-minute drive from Bilbao; an online page gives its population as 37. Small villages make her feel claustrophobic, a response she connects to childhood memories of feeling trapped where she was born. She is careful, however, not to treat rural life as the cause of abuse or machismo: in her view, neither belongs more to the countryside than to other groups or places. The case also links the woman in Entrambasaguas with Edurne Zabaleta in Bilbao, though the two women had never spoken.

The drive itself grows more difficult as sleet gives way to heavy snow. After crossing a bridge into the village, Amaia stops in a small square, where a well-preserved old stone washhouse stands beside a drinking trough and a single-spout fountain. The scene’s stillness and practical waterworks prompt her to exclaim about water being for everyone. The detail gives the settlement a communal, almost emblematic center just before the investigation moves into a private home.

The House and the Interview

The house stands amid a large, well-lit meadow. It is chalet-like, with a hipped roof and steps flanked by large planters holding ornamental trees. Snow gathers over the reddish flagstone path as Amaia leaves her car at the meadow’s edge and walks to the entrance. Like the washhouse in the square, the house initially carries the appeal of a Christmas postcard; unlike the public square, it contains the intimate history the investigation needs.

A tall, heavyset woman, about the age of Amaia’s aunt, opens the door and leads her to a sitting room with a good fire burning in the hearth. The woman speaks calmly: she says that both she and the victim knew the man would eventually kill her. Amaia relaxes at this directness. She usually keeps a professional distance when questioning victims’ relatives, asking concise questions and avoiding graphic terms that could intensify their distress or interrupt the interview. Here, she recognizes a witness who has had time to think and chooses to let her speak.

Evidence Preserved in the Home

When Amaia asks for an item that might provide DNA, the woman anticipates the purpose from watching forensic television and produces a wooden coffer. Inside is a thick brown braid, coiled at the bottom. The sight brings Amaia abruptly back to the memory of her mother braiding her long hair before shaving her head; she instinctively raises a hand to her own head, then lowers it and tries to regain control. The braid is therefore both a possible investigative lead and an object that unexpectedly touches Amaia’s personal past.

The woman has preserved it among the things left behind, but Amaia explains that cut hair cannot provide DNA without a follicle. The coffer cannot yield the sample she hoped for, yet the visit produces another detail about the victim’s final message. The woman recalls that police took a note containing a single word, something like the name of a cake. Amaia supplies Tarttalo, and the woman confirms that this was the word.

Investigative and Narrative Significance

Entrambasaguas contributes more than a setting: the contrast between its modest population, snowbound postcard beauty, and the woman’s matter-of-fact expectation of murder resists any easy equation of picturesque surroundings with safety. Amaia’s explicit distinction between rural life and the causes of abuse also keeps the landscape from becoming a simplistic explanation for the violence. The village is instead where separate forms of evidence meet: a witness’s long-held knowledge, a preserved braid that cannot serve as a DNA sample, and the remembered name Tarttalo.

The interview also moves between public and private traces. Amaia enters through the village square and across an exposed meadow, then listens beside a domestic fire; from the woman’s home emerge both the coffer and a fragment of the victim’s written message. The braid’s failure as forensic material does not erase its significance in the encounter, and the uncertain recollection of a word becomes firmer when Amaia identifies it. In this way, Entrambasaguas is presented as a place where an apparently quiet landscape gives way to testimony that clarifies the investigation.