Anne’s Baby Photograph

Anne’s Baby Photograph is a large black-and-white portrait of Anne Arbizu as an infant, displayed prominently in Flora’s home in Elizondo. Given to Flora by Anne, it is both a keepsake and a material trace of a relationship kept secret for years; when Amaia Salazar recognizes the baby’s likeness to Ibai, the image opens the way to Flora’s account of Anne’s identity and their reunion.

Appearance and Place

The photograph appears as an enlargement surrounded by a fine metal frame. It occupies a substantial part of the wall in Flora’s living room, where Amaia pauses before it after accompanying her sister home. Amaia has seen the same image before at a house in Zarautz, but its presence in Flora’s home gives it a new significance: it belongs not merely to a family interior, but to the history Flora has concealed.

Gift and History

Flora explains that she had given birth to Anne and placed her for adoption, hoping the child would go to a good family. Years later, when she learned that the Arbizu family had adopted a girl, she recognized Anne in the baby carriage. She spent years seeing her daughter grow up from a distance, without daring to reveal what she felt. The photograph came much later: Anne found Flora and visited her at the bakery, having discovered who her birth mother was. Anne wanted to maintain a relationship without hurting her adoptive parents and proposed that they tell others after those parents had died. She gave Flora the portrait as a reminder of herself as a baby.

Recognition and Meaning

Amaia initially mistakes the infant in the photograph for Ibai and asks when Flora took the picture. Flora confirms that the resemblance is remarkable. She says that seeing Ibai hurts her while also making her love him, because he looks so much like Anne. The image thus links two children across different generations and family histories: it recalls the baby Flora relinquished, while the likeness to Ibai makes that lost relationship present in the room.

For Flora, the photograph also preserves the brief period in which she was able to know Anne openly as her daughter. She describes Anne as beautiful, confident, and intelligent, and remembers their time together as a happiness she had never known before. After Anne’s murder, the portrait remains a keepsake of that reunion and a visible reminder of the loss. In the scene with Amaia, it turns a private object into the point of disclosure: looking at the image leads Amaia to understand the bond Flora had never told her about.