Dr. Juan Hidalgo

Dr. Juan Hidalgo is the local physician whose work connects ordinary home births and official death records to the unresolved history of Rosario Iturzaeta’s twin daughters. He delivered the twins at home and was remembered as the doctor who attended births across the valley; after his death, records associated with his practice helped Amaia Salazar establish that a newborn daughter had been born and recorded as having died.

Identity and Medical Practice

In the period recalled by Amaia’s aunt, home birth was normal in the Baztán Valley: few women went to hospital, and the village doctor attended births. Dr. Juan Hidalgo was that doctor. He had since died, but his work remained present in the medical records Amaia later sought out.

His younger sister, Fina Hidalgo, assisted him. Fina was still living in the valley when Amaia began asking about her mother’s birth history. She had worked as a nurse and, in her youth, had also sung in a choir. The siblings’ professional connection mattered beyond the delivery room: Fina could help Amaia navigate the files, while her brother’s records and certification work provided documentary traces of events the family had not discussed.

Rosario Iturzaeta’s Home Birth

On the night Rosario Iturzaeta went into labor, her husband, Juan Salazar, was left waiting while the doctor attended her. At Rosario’s request, Juan had taken their young daughters to their maternal grandmother’s home. The labor had already lasted more than three hours; after the house lost power, candles lit the rooms, and Juan waited in the bathroom, praying after hearing his wife’s cries.

Rosario had chosen to give birth at home, as she had during her earlier pregnancies, despite Dr. Juan Hidalgo’s recommendation that she go to hospital. She had also declined an ultrasound, although the pregnancy carried the risk of twins, and had not allowed Juan to tell the family that they were expecting two babies. When Dr. Juan Hidalgo finally came to the door, he reassured Juan that Rosario was well and that both babies were healthy, announcing the arrival of two strong girls. Juan responded with relief and offered the doctor a drink; the doctor accepted only one, explaining that two other women were close to giving birth that night.

The Record of the Twins

Years later, Amaia examined the surviving obstetric files with Fina’s help. They listed Rosario’s earlier uncomplicated natural births in 1973 and 1975, of Flora and Rosaura, followed by a natural twin birth in 1980. The two newborn girls were described as apparently healthy, but no names were entered. That omission confronted Amaia with documentary evidence of a sister whose birth had been hidden from her.

When Amaia asked whether a newborn’s death would have been documented, Fina explained that her brother signed death certificates for deaths in the valley, unless the death occurred in a hospital in Pamplona. She searched the files and found a certificate for a newborn daughter of Juan Salazar and Rosario Iturzaeta. Its stated cause of death was crib death, the common term then used for sudden infant death syndrome. Fina added that the diagnosis led her to think the baby had probably been unwell, but the record did not resolve the circumstances of the death.

Legacy and Narrative Significance

Dr. Juan Hidalgo’s significance lies in the double function of his medical practice: he attended a birth that the family kept secret, and the records connected with his work later made that hidden birth legible. The files establish a twin delivery and a recorded newborn death, but they do not by themselves explain the discrepancies surrounding the death or the strange circumstances of the remains Amaia investigates. His role is therefore defined less by a fully recovered account of what happened than by the surviving, incomplete paperwork through which Amaia begins to challenge the family’s version of the past.