«El lobo»

«El lobo» is the wolf image through which Amaia interprets Rosario’s death and refuses to accept its apparent finality. For her, a wolf cannot simply disappear by suicide: it must be pursued, surrounded, and confronted face to face before its power can be taken away. The image makes her disbelief a form of reasoning, and transforms an apparent death into a fresh suspicion of deception.

The image of defeat

Amaia’s thinking is shaped by the difference between a death that ends a threat and a genuine victory over it. She cannot experience Rosario’s death as relief, peace, or satisfaction; after considering that absence, she decides the explanation does not fit. Her insistence that the wolf must be hunted and faced gives the image a specific logic: the enemy’s power has not been overcome merely because the enemy appears to be gone.

Rosario and the earlier parallel

The wolf image returns as Amaia recalls another apparent suicide. In both cases, the dying figure’s visible suffering and tears sit uneasily beside the suggestion of voluntary death. Remembering that earlier death while thinking of Rosario makes the resemblance evidence in Amaia’s mind, not consolation. She becomes more certain that neither death was voluntary, although the passage does not establish who caused either one.

Suspicion and its consequence

The image leaves Amaia alert to a larger pattern of lies. She recognizes the revulsion she feels as a response to deception and to the sense of being surrounded by falsehoods. Rather than accepting comfort after Rosario’s death, she leaves Sarasola’s office without saying goodbye and returns directly to the Elizondo police station. The wolf is therefore more than a figure for a dangerous adversary: it marks the unresolved work of pursuing the truth and confronting the power that remains hidden.