Amaia Salazar—Jonan Etxaide

Amaia Salazar—Jonan Etxaide is a working relationship shaped by years of police service, personal loyalty, and a posthumous message that makes trust newly difficult. Jonan’s hidden scrutiny of Amaia’s private life unsettles her, but the message he leaves for her also gives her reason to believe he remained committed to his work and to the truth. His absence becomes not an end to their relationship but the source of an unfinished exchange she must interpret without him.

Colleagues and Loyalty

Amaia has worked with Jonan for years and regards him as a known, trusted colleague rather than an unfamiliar figure under investigation. When Internal Affairs has not yet concluded its inquiry into him, she publicly insists that his conduct during their time together demonstrated both loyalty and honesty. She says the team has no reason to think badly of him. This defense does not settle the investigation; it marks the difference between official suspicion and the knowledge she believes their shared work has given her.

That confidence is tested by the evidence Jonan left behind. The files include photographs of Amaia with Markina, taken on the night they spoke outside the Baluarte, as well as information about Markina’s life and career. Amaia wonders why Jonan took an interest in her private life, whether he had been spying on her, and whether he had read her email. Her anger and helplessness come from the fact that the material is concrete while its purpose remains obscure: she can see what Jonan collected, but cannot ask him why.

A Message from Beyond His Death

The rupture begins when Amaia returns home and notices that she never shut down her computer. On an old account she rarely used, a blue envelope signals new mail. The sender is Jonan, although the message is dated two days earlier, at the time of his funeral: by then he had been dead for more than twenty-four hours and cremated. The message says that Jonan wishes to share an item with her. Its arrival turns his death into a continuing presence in her investigation, while its unexplained timing makes the means of delivery part of the mystery.

Amaia chooses to give him the benefit of the doubt. The files are confusing and come without an explanation, yet she treats them as something tangible Jonan has entrusted to her. The password is Ofrenda, completed with her badge number. To Amaia, the number matters as much as the word: it identifies Jonan as a police officer, and recalls his reluctance to imagine leaving the job. The key acts as a limited but pointed assurance of professional allegiance, set against the troubling evidence that he had secretly watched her.

Trust, Absence, and an Unfinished Exchange

At the station, Amaia experiences Jonan’s absence as something almost spatial: a place beside her whose boundaries she can imagine. What remains is not simply grief but a burden of questions about his parallel, concealed investigation, his motives, and whether his surveillance meant he distrusted her. The contradiction is unresolved. Jonan appears to have watched her, yet he chose to send her the files; he left her a clue marked by his police identity, yet withheld the explanation that would make it legible.

Amaia cannot share everything she has received without betraying what she understands as Jonan’s final wish to communicate specifically with her. At the same time, she knows from experience that trying to solve the matter alone is dangerous. She has confidence that Fermín Montes will follow her, doubts about Zabalza, and particular uncertainty about Inspector Iriarte. Her defense of Jonan therefore coexists with a sharper awareness that loyalty does not tell her whom else to trust.

The relationship continues through Amaia’s effort to understand how the message reached her after Jonan’s death. Having asked Zabalza about the computer files, she asks whether email can be programmed to arrive on a specified date and at a specified time. The question gives the posthumous message a possible technical explanation without diminishing its emotional force: Jonan’s action was prepared in advance, but its meaning remains for Amaia to uncover. Their partnership is left suspended between evidence of secrecy and an act of apparent trust.