Polloe Cemetery

Polloe Cemetery, set on a hill in San Sebastián, is the resting place of the Salazar family mausoleum and the site where Amaia Salazar’s search for her twin sister reaches a stark impasse. The family grave appears to preserve the history of a child’s burial, yet the coffin opened by Amaia and Jonan Etxaide holds scraps of plastic and gravel instead of human remains.

Setting and the Family Mausoleum

The cemetery occupies more than 64,000 square metres above the Egia district. A tunnel of the city’s bypass runs beneath it, while its 7,500 mausoleums and 3,500 niches—many of them imposing structures in marble and stone—reflect San Sebastián’s aristocratic past. The Salazar family tomb stands out with three levels: two lower sections at the sides and a taller central section covered by an immense cross.

The cemetery’s importance to the family is shaped by a division between burial places. Amaia learns that her father was buried beside her grandmother Juanita because that was what he wanted, while her mother had never wholly belonged to the valley and had arranged to be buried with her own family at Polloe. The mausoleum was therefore not simply a family grave: it was also the place where Rosario Iturzaeta’s side of the family held its burial rights.

The Buried Infant and Conflicting Accounts

Amaia’s investigation brings her to the cemetery after records establish that Rosario gave birth to twin girls in 1980. The birth register names no children, and a death certificate identifies a newborn daughter of Juan Salazar and Rosario Iturzaeta, recording the cause as crib death. The family’s account adds another layer: a relative recalls that Rosario changed after the baby died, and confirms that the infant was buried in the family mausoleum.

The burial had taken place under strained circumstances. Because the tomb belonged jointly to the siblings, the family had to be notified whenever it was opened. Rosario called them, but reportedly did not want them to attend the funeral; one sibling insisted, and the others eventually went. They did not see the baby, whose coffin remained closed, and Juan was said to have stayed at home with the girls and the family business. These recollections confirm a burial ceremony, but do not establish what was inside the coffin.

Amaia sets the accounts against the irregularities in the records and the discovery of infant remains in unusual circumstances. She points out that her mother had hidden the birth from the family, that the birth certificate was irregular, and that the bones may belong to the sister. In her view, contradictions over the cause of death and the uncertain identity of the remains make the child’s birth and death more suspicious, not less.

Opening the Tomb

Three municipal workers wait beside the family grave while Amaia, Jonan, and her relatives gather around it. Using a pulley, the workers lift the heavy slab and slide two thick steel bars beneath it. A dry rim of soil and moss along the outer edge suggests that the tomb has not been opened for years; inside, the air is closed and the space looks dry. Two old coffins sit stacked in a metal frame on the right.

Amaia needs a ladder to see into the grave. She and Jonan help lift a coffin, and its weight suggests that it still contains something. Amaia works a crowbar under the lid; after the metal scrapes against the wood, the cover comes loose. Inside lies a bulky shape wrapped in what looks like a white towel. She draws back one end to reveal shreds of a plastic bag and what appears to be a quantity of gravel.

Amaia reaches in, takes a handful of small stones, and lets them fall through her fingers. The search has uncovered the residue of a burial, not the remains she came to find. The family’s memory of a closed coffin and funeral can stand alongside the physical evidence in the tomb, but neither resolves whether the child’s body was ever buried there or what became of it.

Significance

Polloe Cemetery turns a private family burial into a material test of competing accounts. Its jointly held mausoleum links the relatives through shared rights and a remembered funeral, while the empty coffin—reduced to torn plastic and gravel—undercuts the apparent certainty of that memory. For Amaia, the place confirms neither a simple death nor a complete explanation: it makes the absence itself part of the evidence.