Azanza is a small village in the merindad of Estella whose principal industry is the production of patxaran, a liqueur made from sloes. In the investigation, its orchards and thorny blackthorn bushes conceal a woman’s grave; the recovery there brings a hidden burial into the open and connects the site to a wider pattern of forensic inquiry.

Setting and Selection as a Burial Site

The man who disclosed the burial linked Azanza to his childhood. His father worked for a liquor company and, after the sloe harvest, employees could take fruit left on the bushes. He had gone into the fields with his father and remembered the blackthorns as especially vicious: their sharp, poisonous spines could cause an infection, and the pain lasted for days. He said that among those bushes he had thought he would find the best place for her.

The location’s ordinary association with harvesting and liqueur-making thus acquires a darker use. The thorny growth offered concealment, while the man’s account made his choice of grave inseparable from a specific, remembered landscape. When Judge Markina ordered him to accompany the authorities and indicate the site, the burial place became an active crime scene.

Discovery of the Grave

By the time the team had assembled and located the indicated spot, evening was falling. The last light seemed to linger among millions of small white flowers covering the trees, although spring was still some way off. Their appearance gave the place the air of a palace corridor, a striking contrast to the makeshift grave hidden there.

Amaia Salazar watched the technicians set up lights and a tent. Though heavy rain was not expected, she had insisted on bringing the shelter so that precipitation would not compromise possible evidence around the grave. As the excavation proceeded, a black plastic wrapping came into view. The body had been placed in two large rubbish bags, one around the head and the other around the feet, joined at the woman’s waist with paper tape. The tape had come loose; moved by a light breeze, it made the wrapped body seem to stir in the grave. A stronger gust exposed the victim’s red-and-white sweater, which Amaia recognized from a dream and which sent a shiver down her back.

She ordered photographs from every angle, then stepped away, crossed herself, and bowed her head to pray for the victim. The recovery was therefore both a methodical forensic operation and a moment of personal ritual for Amaia.

Forensic Significance

After the body was recovered, Doctor San Martín examined a clean cut to the arm and concluded that it had been made after death, when the heart had stopped and the blood had begun to clot. The toothed cut suggested a powered cutting implement, perhaps an electric knife or grinder. Its direction and appearance recalled the case of Johana Márquez, where investigators had initially assumed the father was responsible and had compared tools from his home and car without finding a match.

The resemblance raised the possibility of a connection but did not establish one. San Martín could say that the cuts he examined followed the same technique and appeared to have been made by a right-handed person with considerable strength, but photographs could not identify the tool conclusively. Physical samples would have been needed for more definitive comparison. Azanza’s grave therefore supplied evidence that sharpened a line of inquiry without, by itself, resolving it.

Role in the Investigation

Azanza matters as more than the place where a body was hidden: its recovery transforms the man’s account into a scene that can be examined, photographed, and compared with other evidence. The village’s flowering trees and sloe bushes frame that shift from concealment to investigation. The same landscape that had seemed to the killer a suitable hiding place becomes the setting where the victim’s clothing, the wrapping, and the wound begin to speak to the investigators.