Amaia's Partner Markina

Amaia's Partner Markina is a judge whose private relationship with Amaia Salazar becomes entangled with the investigation she is pursuing. He offers her access to evidence about her father through methods he admits are legally questionable; later, he shoots Yolanda Berrueta and acknowledges killing Jonan Etxaide. His arc turns the apparent support of an intimate partner into a direct threat, and ends when Iriarte shoots him in a tomb.

Identity and Place in the Investigation

Markina enters the evidence trail partly through his office: photographs in Jonan Etxaide’s files show Markina’s secretary speaking with Yolanda Berrueta in a café. The images make the connection worth investigating, but do not establish what the two women discussed or prove Markina’s involvement in the infant deaths. The wider case is being assembled through records, interviews, and maps tracing deaths along the Baztán River, a pattern that gives the unexplained contacts their investigative significance without resolving them.

The investigation’s map gathers together cases from towns beside the river, including Elizondo, Oronoz-Mugaire, Narbarte, Doneztebe, and Hondarribia. Older cases are added as the inquiry reaches back toward earlier suspected deaths. Markina’s role as a judge places him close to the legal machinery surrounding this work, but his eventual admission that he used extralegal subterfuges reveals a more personal and compromised involvement than his office suggests.

Relationship with Amaia and the Tomb

Markina’s relationship with Amaia is intimate enough that they share a home and wine, and that she has asked him to bring her more information and stronger evidence about her father. He tells her that he also investigated her and her family when they first met. His account makes their relationship a channel through which the case has advanced: he says her demands led him to seek legally dubious ways to satisfy them.

He discloses that a tomb in Igantzi was opened that morning without authorization. Amaia immediately challenges the absence of permission. His admission places their personal trust under pressure: evidence she wanted has been obtained through a breach of procedure, and the person who supplied it is not merely a source but someone close to her. The scene exposes how their private bond has become interwoven with the investigation’s handling of evidence.

Violence and Confession

During the confrontation with Yolanda, she punches Amaia and knocks her against the steps. Amaia draws her weapon, but before she can regain control, a shot rings out. Yolanda falls with a wound to her chest; Markina stands nearby in the rain. Amaia checks Yolanda’s pulse while keeping her gun aimed at him. Markina says he believed Yolanda was about to attack Amaia, offering protection as his explanation for the shooting, though the act leaves Amaia confronting the lethal force he has used in her presence.

The deeper betrayal comes in the tomb. When Amaia demands to know whether he killed Jonan, Markina confirms that he did. She collapses in grief at the sight of Jonan’s body and raises her Glock toward Markina. He tells her not to shoot, then lifts Jonan’s pistol and points it at his own head. Before Amaia can fire, shots from the entrance strike Markina. Iriarte has shot him; Markina falls beside Amaia, and she takes Jonan’s pistol from him. When she says that Markina killed Jonan, Iriarte confirms it with a nod.

Change and Narrative Significance

Markina’s actions transform the meaning of his earlier help. His willingness to find evidence for Amaia initially appears to serve her investigation, but his own account links that help to unauthorized conduct; his shooting of Yolanda and confession about Jonan reveal the lethal consequences hidden behind his position of trust. The progression is stark: he claims to act to protect Amaia, yet he has already killed the colleague whose death has devastated her.

His death does not undo the harm or restore the trust that his confession destroys. Instead, Iriarte’s intervention ends Markina’s immediate threat while leaving Amaia face to face with Jonan’s murder and the intimate betrayal behind it. Through Markina, the story makes the boundary between lawful authority, personal loyalty, and violence impossible to treat as secure.