San Sebastián is an important off-site point in the investigation: a family tomb there contains an empty coffin tied to Amaia Salazar’s sister, while the city’s forensic facilities examined infant deaths that become part of a broader regional pattern. The connection is not a single crime scene but a trail of evidence linking a concealed family loss, institutional records, and deaths along the Baztán–Bidasoa River.

The Empty Coffin

A white coffin in a family pantheon at a cemetery in San Sebastián had been made to appear occupied. When Amaia opened it, she found bags of gravel arranged at the bottom to simulate the weight of a body. The deception recalled another empty coffin discovered during the investigation of Valentín Esparza, making the San Sebastián grave part of a recurring pattern rather than an isolated anomaly.

The photographs in Jonan Etxaide’s files sharpened the connection. Alongside images of the empty coffin were photographs of bones left during the desecration of the church graves at Arizkun: ancient Mairu-beso bones and other, clean white bones identified as belonging to Amaia’s sister. The coffin in San Sebastián and the remains found at Arizkun thus mark two different stages of the same unresolved absence—the sister’s supposed resting place was empty, while her bones had turned up elsewhere.

Forensic and Regional Connections

San Sebastián also figures as a center of forensic investigation. Autopsies on infant girls whose deaths were officially classified as sudden infant death syndrome were performed at the forensic institute there. Investigators found four such cases associated with the banks of the Bidasoa at Hondarribia; after checking baptism records, they reduced that group to two cases relevant to their inquiry. The distinction mattered: one excluded child was German and had died while her parents were on holiday, while the other had been baptized.

The Hondarribia cases extended the inquiry beyond the Baztán towns and into Guipúzcoa, where Amaia’s team did not have jurisdiction. The reports supplied a regional lead, but pursuing it formally would require a request through the relevant judge in Irún. As the investigation broadened, the map placed those cases within a much longer line of infant deaths associated with towns along the river system, from the Baztán to the Bidasoa.

Significance in the Investigation

San Sebastián’s two roles expose different limits in the evidence. The forensic records offer official causes of death and a basis for comparing cases, but the empty family coffin points to a body that is missing from its expected place. Neither clue resolves the mystery on its own; together, they make the geography of graves, records, and riverbank deaths part of the investigation’s logic.

The city therefore serves as a hinge between intimate loss and a widening criminal pattern. Amaia’s sister’s empty coffin turns a family secret into material evidence, while the autopsy trail from San Sebastián helps the team test whether infant deaths across an administrative boundary belong to the same inquiry. The case’s map does not make proximity proof of cause, but it makes the river corridor—and the institutions and burial sites around it—impossible to ignore.