Rosario Iturzaeta’s psychiatric illness

Rosario Iturzaeta’s psychiatric illness is not presented through a complete clinical history but pieced together from obstetric files, a death certificate, relatives’ recollections, and the accounts of those present at her home birth. That fractured record links her depression to the concealed death of one of her twin daughters in 1980, while leaving the precise circumstances—and the degree to which medical intervention might have mattered—unresolved.

Diagnosis in a Fragmentary Record

When Amaia Salazar searches for information about her mother, a medical worker recalls Rosario as a patient who had been described in the period’s language as having “bad nerves,” a loose label associated with what was then called neurosis. The phrase supplies neither a diagnosis nor a clear account of symptoms. It does, however, establish that Rosario’s distress was known to medical professionals, even as the surviving material offers little clinical detail.

The obstetric records give a more precise chronology of her pregnancies than of her mental health. They list a natural, uncomplicated birth in 1973, when Rosario had a daughter named Flora, and another natural, uncomplicated birth in 1975, resulting in Rosaura. In 1980, the file records a third delivery: twins, again described as natural and uncomplicated, with both babies apparently healthy. Neither twin is named in the entry. The bureaucratic certainty of the birth listing thus sits beside a consequential omission: the file does not explain what happened to either child after delivery.

That omission matters because the illness is repeatedly connected to the period around the twins’ birth, but the evidence does not settle its onset or course. The record supports that Rosario was depressed and struggling; it does not establish a complete diagnosis, a treatment history, or a clinical explanation for her actions.

The Birth and the Death of an Infant

At the home birth, Dr. Manuel Hidalgo later acknowledged that he had known Rosario was depressed and was worried that she was not doing well. He regretted not insisting that she go to a hospital when she refused, saying that he had not done enough as her doctor. His confession makes the circumstances of care part of the story of the illness: Rosario delivered outside a hospital, and her physician recognized signs of distress but did not secure hospital care.

After one infant died, Fina Hidalgo examined the body and said it showed no signs of violence. She thought the apparent asphyxiation could be explained as crib death, which she described as common among newborns, especially in their first hours. Manuel rejected that explanation. The disagreement left the cause unsettled in the family’s immediate aftermath rather than establishing that the death had been accidental or deliberate.

Fina also argued that Rosario was suffering and that treatment might have improved her condition. When Juan Salazar asked whether pills could have made Rosario normal, Manuel could not promise that; he said only that she might have been better. His uncertainty is important. The narrative connects untreated depression, a high-risk home birth, and the infant’s death, but it does not confirm that medication would have prevented the tragedy or determine precisely how the child died.

Family Memory and the Hidden Twin

Years later, relatives told Amaia that they had known about Flora and Rosaura but not about a third daughter. They remembered Rosario becoming increasingly distant, eventually telling them that she wanted no further contact and regarded the family she had formed with her husband in the Baztán Valley as her only family. One relative recalled that Rosario had been a cheerful, singing child and said her change came later. Another placed the turning point after the death of the baby. The recollections associate the loss with Rosario’s withdrawal, though they do not offer a single, fully corroborated timeline.

The death certificate found in the records identifies a newborn daughter of Juan Salazar and Rosario Iturzaeta and gives the cause as crib death. That wording appears to conflict with the family’s later account of the delivery and with the disagreement between Fina and Manuel over whether crib death explained what they had seen. The certificate therefore documents a recorded cause, not a resolution of the conflicting evidence.

The death was also surrounded by omissions. Rosario had not told the wider family that she had given birth to twins; neither Amaia nor her sisters knew of the additional child. The birth file named neither twin, and the circumstances of the death certificate raised questions for Amaia. When she later explained the mystery to her relatives, she connected those irregularities with human remains discovered under unusual circumstances and said they might belong to her dead sister. Her relatives had seen a closed coffin being buried, but had not seen the body. These details deepen the uncertainty without proving, by themselves, what happened to the infant or what became of her remains.

Medical Responsibility and the Wider Investigation

The question of Rosario’s treatment acquires another dimension when Amaia investigates psychiatric care provided to violent prisoners. She asks whether inmates associated with earlier cases had received therapy in prison. Reports show that Jasón Medina and Ramón Quiralte attended therapy in Pamplona, while an inmate in Logroño had spoken with a psychiatrist whose name was not recorded. In the Pamplona cases, the University Clinic of Navarra supplied the therapist.

Amaia then finds what she describes as “ghost reports”: prison psychiatric documents bearing Padre Sarasola’s signature but no psychiatrist’s name in the assigned-clinician field. The paperwork had passed through institutional systems without prompting sufficient scrutiny. This inquiry makes Sarasola’s knowledge of Rosario’s treatment and behavior newly suspicious: Amaia has reason to question how he knew private details when he had never treated her. She considers his connection to the clinic and to the investigation, but suspicion is not proof that he personally treated Rosario or caused her illness.

Amaia further suggests that Doctor Berasategui had told Sarasola about Rosario’s case and that the clinic’s prison volunteering may have enabled staff to seek out particular patients. She characterizes the cases of interest as involving an additional “matiz del mal,” or dimension of evil. This is Amaia’s accusation about the clinic’s methods and motives, not a clinical account of Rosario. In the investigation, her illness becomes entangled with questions about medical privacy, institutional records, and the selection of vulnerable patients.

Meaning and Limits of the Evidence

Rosario’s illness is therefore both a personal suffering and a point where family memory and official documentation fail to align. The records provide dates, birth descriptions, and a stated cause of death; relatives supply recollections of Rosario’s withdrawal; and Manuel’s admission supplies evidence that her depression was recognized but, in his view, insufficiently addressed. None of these sources alone explains the infant’s death or establishes a definitive medical history for Rosario.

That incompleteness is central to the subject’s significance. The story does not reduce the tragedy to a diagnosis, nor does it make the possibility of treatment a certainty about what could have been prevented. Instead, Rosario’s depression is disclosed through consequences: the rejected hospital birth, the physician’s remorse, the family’s silence about the twin, and Amaia’s later attempt to reconcile conflicting documents and testimony. What remains unresolved is not incidental to the account; it is the condition under which Amaia must investigate both her mother’s past and the institutions that claim to treat the vulnerable.