Policía Foral de Navarra

The Policía Foral de Navarra is the regional police force that leads the investigation in and around Elizondo, with Inspector Amaia Salazar’s knowledge of the area treated as a central investigative asset. Its work brings local expertise, forensic inquiry, and cooperation with other institutions into the same case, while the novel also exposes how gaps between organizations can delay recognition of violence.

Identity and Local Role

The agency’s authority in the story is established through its responsibility for the investigation and the suitability of its lead investigator. When the case is assigned, Amaia is selected for her investigative ability and familiarity with the area, and she is to handle it with her team. That decision makes the force’s local reach more than a matter of geography: knowledge of the community is presented as a practical tool for recognizing what outsiders might miss and for directing an inquiry where the evidence is found.

Amaia is explicit about her institutional identity. When addressed as an inspector, she corrects the designation to Inspector Salazar of the Policía Foral. Later, she identifies herself as an inspector of the Policía Foral de Navarra when contacting an agent in the United States. These exchanges mark her as a representative of the regional force even when she is dealing with other agencies or seeking information beyond her own jurisdiction.

The Elizondo unit gives that local role a concrete base. Amaia says she will travel to Elizondo that afternoon and remain there for several days to direct the investigation. Her working team includes officers such as Jonan Etxaide and Zabalza, while Fermín Montes later joins the case’s operational discussions. The evidence establishes a functioning investigative group, but not a detailed organizational chart; its structure is shown through the assignment of tasks and the circulation of findings rather than through formal description.

From Suspicion to Investigation

The force’s intervention matters because the initial interpretation of events risks leaving a death unrecognized. One official remarks that without the intervention, people would still be waiting for a woman to send a postcard from Cancún; the case is now understood as a homicide. The contrast between an assumed disappearance and a murder underscores why the inquiry cannot be treated as routine or allowed to rest on an easy explanation.

The physical evidence also complicates the investigation. A forensic assessment describes an amputation from the elbow, made with a toothed but sharp implement such as an electric knife or jigsaw. A later examination of another set of remains identifies a clean post-mortem cut, made after the heart had stopped and the blood had begun to coagulate. Its direction and toothed edge resemble the cut in the Johana Márquez case, where investigators had assumed the father was responsible and had compared household and vehicle tools without finding a match. The similarity raises a possible connection, but does not itself establish which tool was used or who wielded it.

That distinction between resemblance and proof shapes the force’s investigative work. A forensic specialist says that photographs show the remains are adult forearms and that the cuts look alike, but photographs cannot establish the bones’ age or sex, nor distinguish surgical amputation from grave desecration. Direct samples would be needed to make molds, scan the cut surfaces, and compare them. The force must therefore pursue the lead without treating a suggestive pattern as a conclusive match.

Other laboratory findings add different kinds of information. One set of bones, burned at one end but sufficiently preserved for testing, is identified as belonging to a male newborn, approximately nine months prenatal or one month old, and dated to about 150 years earlier, with a five-year margin of error. A separate comparison finds a 25 percent correspondence between Amaia and a relative, though not with the fetus itself. These findings expand the inquiry while also defining what the tests do and do not establish: biological relationship and approximate age are evidence, not a complete account of the circumstances behind the remains.

Fieldwork and Cooperation

Amaia’s work extends beyond the initial scene. After receiving information at the station, she waits until she is outside before calling Teniente Padua of the Guardia Civil. It is nearly eight in the evening; she misses James and Ibai, still faces a drive of more than half an hour to Elizondo, and uses the cold evening to organize her thoughts and plan the next steps. The detail makes clear that the investigation depends on persistent coordination as well as formal assignment: information gathered in one place must be translated into practical requests and work on the ground.

The force’s cooperation with the Guardia Civil becomes especially visible during the search for Rosario. Both agencies take part in the operation, which includes a dog unit brought from Zaragoza. After 24 hours, volunteers find Rosario’s hooded, fur-trimmed coat caught on branches almost two kilometers downstream. Javier Markina examines the garment, whose condition shows many impacts and scratches, and the operation is then called off. The episode demonstrates the scale of the joint search and the role of physical evidence in decisions about whether to continue it; the coat is a significant find, but the passage does not establish Rosario’s fate.

The investigation also reaches across institutional and geographic boundaries. Amaia contacts an agent in the United States through a number supplied by Inspector Dupree, identifying herself and her force before requesting help. In another line of inquiry, she asks about psychiatric treatment received by prisoners in Logroño and Pamplona. The responses point to information held by different bodies: an illegible signature in a prison report, a psychiatric service without a named clinician, and therapy records overseen by the university clinic. The Policía Foral’s inquiries can connect these records, but the records themselves are dispersed among organizations and do not always identify who acted.

Case Management and Institutional Scrutiny

In a later briefing, Amaia reopens the line of inquiry marked as desecrations. The team has questioned Beñat Zaldúa, a young man from Arizkun who wrote a blog advocating recognition of Agote history. He admits to having a collaborator: an adult who contacted him by email and encouraged him to act. Zaldúa says he initially expected the actions to bring attention to his cause, but became frightened when bones appeared. The information was not disclosed to the press, though people in Arizkun were already discussing it. The episode shows the force distinguishing the visible participant from the adult who may have encouraged him, while testing the difference between public rumor and material known to investigators.

The agency’s institutional environment is not confined to police procedure. Amaia’s inquiries into prison therapy uncover apparently ghostwritten or incomplete reports: the signature of Doctor Sarasola appears, but the space for the assigned psychiatrist contains no name. In Pamplona, both Medina and Quiralte attended therapy, with the university clinic responsible for supervision and someone from the clinic regularly sent to provide it. Elsewhere, a report confirms that a prisoner in Logroño spoke with a psychiatrist but does not name that person. The contrast between records that confirm treatment and records that obscure responsibility becomes part of the investigation itself.

Amaia’s questioning of Doctor Berasategui connects those administrative gaps to the clinic’s practices. She challenges the claim that prison volunteer work is simply altruistic, suggesting instead that the clinic’s psychiatric leadership sought particular cases—patients viewed as having an added dimension of evil—and that prison outreach could help locate them. This is her investigative allegation, not an independently established description of the clinic’s policy. Its significance lies in the force’s effort to test whether institutional routines and case-selection practices concealed a deliberate pattern, rather than accepting incomplete files as a sufficient explanation.

Significance

The Policía Foral de Navarra is depicted through the work its investigators perform: assigning responsibility, distinguishing leads from proof, coordinating searches, and asking who is accountable when information crosses institutional boundaries. Its local knowledge helps place Amaia in charge, but local familiarity does not eliminate uncertainty; the cut marks, photographs, laboratory comparisons, and incomplete treatment records all require interpretation and follow-up.

The story’s closing dedication addresses the Policía Foral de Navarra and, in particular, the Elizondo unit, ending with AURRERA and Milesker. That acknowledgment gives the force a presence beyond the plot’s procedural machinery. Within the narrative, it is the institution through which a scattered set of deaths, remains, and records becomes an organized investigation; its effectiveness depends not on a single decisive clue, but on sustained collaboration and attention to what the evidence can—and cannot—say.