Flora Salazar

Flora Salazar is Amaia Salazar’s sister, a commercially capable but guarded member of the Salazar family. After Víctor’s death, she leaves Elizondo for Zarautz, while her relationship with Anne Arbizu and her decision to arrange Rosario’s psychiatric treatment draw her into two of the novel’s most consequential family conflicts. Amaia’s suspicions about Flora’s role in Víctor’s death remain accusations in the evidence presented, but the hidden closeness to Anne that provokes them is supported by Freddy’s account.

Family Position and Departure

The aftermath of Víctor’s death unsettles the whole family. Engrasi remains in her familiar routines, while Flora moves hurriedly to Zarautz, ostensibly to film daily baking programmes for national television. Her departure is presented as a withdrawal from the family’s home territory at a moment when its relationships are under pressure; the narrative does not establish that the television work is a false pretext, only that it is the stated reason for leaving.

Flora’s move also coincides with a change in the family business. She hands control of Mantecadas Salazar to Rosaura Salazar, a decision that surprises her. Rosaura proves to be an excellent manager, though initially overwhelmed by the responsibility. Amaia offers help and spends many weekends in Elizondo, but comes to recognize that Rosaura no longer needs her support to run the business. The transfer thus marks both Flora’s absence and Rosaura’s growing competence: the company she had managed can continue under her sister’s leadership.

The family’s geography remains emotionally significant even as Flora departs. Amaia keeps returning to Elizondo to eat with her sisters and stay at Engrasi’s house, which she comes to understand as home. Flora’s move contrasts with that renewed sense of rootedness. The text gives no account of Flora’s private feelings about leaving, so the contrast rests on their different circumstances rather than on an asserted motive: Amaia is drawn back toward family life, while Flora is living elsewhere and has ceded the business.

Anne Arbizu and the Suspicion Around Víctor

Flora’s connection to Anne emerges through Freddy, who tells Amaia that he once saw the two women together. He had gone to fetch something from a storeroom when Anne came out through the back door; they spoke briefly and parted with a notably affectionate embrace. On a later Sunday, while Freddy and Rosaura were having vermouth on the covered porch, Flora stopped to greet them and said she had come from Mass. Anne passed along the street. Freddy noticed that he and Flora both concealed their recognition, though Flora did so even more conspicuously. Rosaura, he says, noticed nothing.

Freddy later asked Anne about the apparent connection. She denied that he had seen what he thought he had seen, became angry, and left him with the impression that he had been mistaken. He dropped the matter at the time because it did not seem important to him. In retrospect, however, his observation gives Amaia a reason to challenge Flora about a relationship Flora had not acknowledged openly. The evidence establishes Freddy’s account of the meeting and his interpretation of the women’s behavior; it does not independently explain what their relationship involved.

When Amaia asks Flora to talk about Anne, Flora’s jaw trembles slightly. Amaia expects a denial, but Flora instead asks what she wants to know. That brief response does not settle the question of what Flora knew or did, but it turns the conversation from an evasion Amaia anticipates into an opening for confrontation.

Amaia then lays out the grounds for her suspicion: Anne had a relationship with Freddy, caused Rosaura pain, and shared an affectionate connection with Flora; Anne was killed in the river by Víctor, whom Flora had been married to for twenty years; and Flora killed Víctor. Amaia rejects Flora’s self-defence account, arguing that Víctor was incapable of threatening Flora and would not have dared to do so. She further contends that Flora had not acted to stop Víctor because he was killing young women, but because he had harmed Anne. These are Amaia’s allegations and interpretation, not an independently confirmed account of Flora’s motive. Their force in the scene comes from the contrast Amaia draws between Flora’s previously expressed contempt for the victims and the possibility that Anne’s death, rather than theirs, was the point at which Flora intervened.

The Family’s Formal Distance and Sudden Contact

Flora and Amaia’s relationship is marked by distance as well as kinship. When Amaia is with Javier Markina and Flora calls, the call itself strikes her as unusual: Flora does not normally telephone her, not even at Christmas or on her birthday, preferring cards that Amaia regards as as correct and formal as Flora herself. The timing interrupts an intimate encounter. Markina has asked Amaia to dine with him, and she has recognized that his appeal comes from a man in love rather than simply from a judge. Seeing Flora’s name on the phone, she excuses herself and steps outside to hear over the noise of the bar.

The contrast gives the call particular weight without revealing its contents in that moment. A sister who usually maintains contact through formal greetings has chosen to telephone, making the change in medium itself a signal that something is different. The episode also places Flora’s call at a juncture when Amaia must turn away from a private possibility with Markina and attend to family business. The evidence establishes the interruption and the rarity of Flora’s calls, not what Flora intends by making this one.

Rosario’s Transfer and the Question of Consent

Flora later explains that Padre Sarasola contacted her about three months earlier. He described himself as a physician and an authority in psychiatry, and said Rosario’s circumstances were cited as a case study at psychiatric conferences. He was interested in her progress and had ideas for a new approach to treatment. He offered to move Rosario to his clinic in Pamplona and treat her without charge. Flora says that the clinic was expensive, but its cost was not what persuaded her; she considered the prospect of new techniques and advances potentially beneficial to her mother.

According to Flora, Rosario had seemed happy where she was, and that had initially mattered most to her. The balance changes when she becomes concerned about Rosario’s safety. She points out that someone can enter the existing facility and that Rosario has not even been taking her medication. Rosaura nods as Flora explains. Her account presents the transfer not simply as a response to the clinic’s offer, but as a decision made under changed circumstances: what Flora had regarded as a possible improvement becomes, in her view, a matter of protection.

At the clinic, Flora asks why she was not informed about Rosario’s visits. The director answers that the visits were covered by doctor-patient confidentiality and were made only at the patient’s own request, to prevent even well-intentioned visitors from causing harm. Flora follows the implication by asking whether Rosario authorized the visits. The question exposes a conflict between her role as a daughter who believes she must safeguard her mother and the patient’s right to choose whom to see. Flora’s concern is not dismissed, but the clinic’s explanation places a limit on her authority: family membership alone does not entitle her to information about Rosario’s private treatment.

Characterization and Narrative Role

Flora is defined less by a single, settled account of her motives than by the uneven visibility of her actions. Her managerial ability is acknowledged through Rosaura’s success after taking over Mantecadas Salazar; her personal life is less transparent, as Freddy recalls a meeting with Anne that Flora appeared to conceal. When Amaia confronts her, Flora’s physical hesitation is visible, but she does not immediately deny the connection. In the clinic discussion, by contrast, she speaks plainly about the reasons for the transfer and presses the question of whether Rosario consented to visits.

These contrasts keep Flora’s family roles from collapsing into one another. She can be the absent sister who has left Elizondo, the former manager whose business responsibilities pass to Rosaura, a woman connected to Anne in a way Freddy found difficult to explain, and a daughter trying to protect Rosario. Amaia’s accusation ties the hidden relationship to a possible motive for killing Víctor, while Flora’s account of the clinic reveals a different kind of conflict: care can prompt decisive action, but it cannot erase another person’s privacy or wishes. The available evidence leaves Flora’s alleged motive unresolved, making her both a subject of Amaia’s investigation and a participant in the family’s practical efforts to manage Rosario’s safety.