Juan Salazar

Juan Salazar is the father of Rosario Iturzaeta’s daughters and a central witness to the hidden tragedy of their twin birth in 1980. His story is pieced together through family testimony, medical records, and scenes from the days after the delivery: he grieves over one newborn while caring for the surviving twin, even as others construct an official account that obscures how the child died.

Identity and Family Background

The family’s medical records list three deliveries to Rosario: Flora in 1973, Rosaura in 1975, and a twin birth in 1980. The earlier births are described as uncomplicated, and the two girls born in 1980 are also recorded as apparently healthy; the record does not name either twin. Juan is identified as their father, but the twins’ birth was later kept from the wider family. Even his adult daughters, Amaia Salazar and her sisters, did not know they had had another sister.

The official record offers a starkly reduced version of the event. A death certificate identifies a newborn daughter of Juan and Rosario and gives her cause of death as sudden infant death syndrome, commonly called cot death. That entry becomes one piece of an increasingly uncertain history: the family was not told about the birth, the birth documentation contained irregularities, and remains found under unusual circumstances were later thought to belong to the dead twin.

Grief and the Disputed Account

On June 23, 1980, Juan sits in his home holding his newborn daughter and weeping inconsolably. Doctor Manuel Hidalgo sits opposite him, watching the sleeping baby and Juan’s tears fall onto the blanket. When Juan asks what happened in the room, Fina Hidalgo says they do not know for certain. Juan rejects that evasion: he insists that they saw what Rosario was doing when they entered, and specifically objects to Fina’s suggestion that Rosario might have been placing a cushion beneath the baby’s head. Juan says the cushion was over the child’s face, not under her head.

His protest is a direct challenge to the softened version of events being offered in the room. It does not establish every detail of what happened or what Juan later understood, but it shows that he recognizes the difference between an accidental explanation and the physical circumstances he says he witnessed. The confrontation leaves the child’s death disputed even as the adults around Juan move toward an official account.

The Death Certificate and the Twin’s Hidden Presence

After examining the dead infant, Doctor Manuel Hidalgo notes the bluish coloring associated with asphyxia and redness on the small nose, which he interprets as evidence of pressure. He nevertheless writes sudden infant death syndrome, or cot death, on a death-certificate form and signs it. The act turns an account Juan had just challenged into a formal medical record. The evidence does not show Juan signing or preparing that certificate; it shows him objecting to Fina’s denial while the doctor later records the death under a different explanation.

The following morning, Juan prepares a bottle for the surviving baby. Fina, the doctor’s sister, has shown him how to make it, and this is his first time feeding the child. Rosario has been prescribed strong medication incompatible with breastfeeding, and the doctor has advised that she should not have to touch the baby. Juan moves the surviving child’s cradle into the sitting room, holds her, and smiles at the strength with which she sucks at the bottle’s teat. In the same room, a second cradle contains the other twin’s small, motionless body. The two cradles make the loss impossible to separate from the work of caring for the living child.

Later Disclosure and Narrative Significance

Years later, Amaia learns that her mother had given birth to twins and that one newborn had died. When she lays out the contradictions, she emphasizes that neither she nor her sisters knew of the child’s birth, that the records were irregular, and that the remains found in unusual circumstances raised further questions. Her relatives say they saw the baby being buried, but Amaia distinguishes their memory of a burial from proof of the body’s identity. The gap between what the family remembers and what can be verified keeps Juan’s household history unsettled.

Juan’s limited but vivid appearances bind together the story’s domestic and documentary evidence. He is shown neither as the author of the medical cover story nor as someone who fully explains the subsequent concealment. Instead, the scenes place him at the point where grief, eyewitness objection, and fatherly care meet: holding one daughter as the other dies, then feeding the survivor beside the twin’s hidden body. The later discovery of the birth makes those intimate details part of a larger family secret, while leaving important questions about what Juan knew and what happened after that morning unresolved.