Ainhoa in the Basque Country matters to the investigation both as the site of a family tomb whose contents could not be rechecked and as a geographic exception to the emerging pattern of infant deaths along the Baztán River. Its position outside that river corridor forced Amaia Salazar to distinguish a compelling map from a complete explanation.

Tomb and Uncertain Evidence

The Berrueta family tomb in Ainhoa became a focus of concern because investigators could not confirm whether Yolanda Berrueta’s child remained buried there. Amaia acknowledged that they had no way to establish that the child was absent from the grave, while obtaining judicial permission to inspect it again was considered out of reach. The suspected absence therefore remained unresolved rather than becoming a verified finding.

The tomb’s importance persisted in later cemetery preparations elsewhere: equipment used to cover the Tremond-Berrueta tomb in Ainhoa was recognized at the Tabese tomb in Hondarribia. That connection brought Ainhoa into the investigation’s wider trail of graves and possible disturbance, without itself proving what had happened to the remains there.

A Geographic Exception

As Amaia reworked the locations of investigated infant deaths, she initially left Ainhoa off the map. Including the Ainhoa children disrupted the more linear arrangement of cases that appeared when she plotted the victims along the Baztán River, from Erratzu through Arraioz, Elbete, and Elizondo, and onward toward Oieregi. The river’s course gave the pattern a visible geographic spine; Ainhoa’s cases did not fit that line in the same way.

This was a working distinction, not a dismissal of the Ainhoa deaths. Amaia later drew a broader map of cases around the river and its surrounding towns, while continuing to treat the Ainhoa tomb as a separate investigative problem. The contrast shows how the map helped organize a hypothesis but could not settle the individual question of what lay in a particular grave.

Investigative Significance

The Ainhoa evidence sharpened the limits of the inquiry. A suspected missing child could not be confirmed through another inspection, and excluding Ainhoa from the river-aligned plot made the pattern clearer without resolving the case attached to the tomb. The location thus held two kinds of uncertainty at once: uncertainty about the burial itself and uncertainty about how far a geographic pattern could explain deaths beyond its apparent corridor.