Berasategui’s Encrypted Files

Berasategui’s Encrypted Files were a coded archive of every case the psychiatrist had worked on, both at his clinic and in private practice. Their importance lies as much in what they recorded as in what happened to them: they included the Esparza case, yet after Berasategui’s arrest the files were removed from the police investigation and sent to Rome under Vatican authority. They became a record whose existence was acknowledged but whose contents Amaia Salazar could not examine.

Identity and Scope

The files were described as a meticulous, encrypted dossier covering every case Berasategui had treated or worked on. The archive was kept at his clinic and encompassed both his institutional work and his private activity. The Esparza case was specifically among the cases recorded, connecting the archive to the investigation into the death of Valentín Esparza’s daughter and the circumstances surrounding her body.

The evidence establishes the breadth and organization of the archive, but not the individual entries or the exact information recorded about Esparza. Its coded form and comprehensive scope make it more than a loose collection of notes: it was a systematic case record. Yet the detailed catalog that might have clarified how Berasategui understood his patients and cases remained inaccessible to Amaia.

Seizure and Transfer

The files became an institutional issue after Berasategui was arrested in connection with Rosario’s release and the crimes known as the Tarttalo case. Sarasola told Amaia that senior Vatican authorities had taken an interest in the matter. He explained that psychiatry could serve as a route to cases displaying what the Church regarded as a distinctive aspect of evil, a field the Church had pursued since its foundation. In that account, Berasategui had made important advances, but had kept them hidden from the Church.

When the case came to light, Vatican authorities reviewed Berasategui’s files and separated them from the rest of the material. Their stated rationale was that they held no interest for the police investigation, while their nature was disturbing and difficult for the general public to absorb. The files were then transferred to Rome for security. The sequence was consequential: an archive gathered through psychiatric work became subject to a separate religious authority precisely when it might have informed a criminal inquiry.

Conflict Over Access

Amaia immediately framed the transfer as the removal of evidence from a case. Sarasola rejected that description and told her that ecclesiastical authority stood above police authority in matters of this kind. He stressed that the files had left the country in a diplomatic pouch and that she could do nothing to retrieve them. His explanation offered a blunt account of the imbalance: the files had not merely been misplaced or lost in routine administration; they had been deliberately taken beyond the reach of her investigation.

That conflict leaves a sharp distinction between knowing that evidence exists and being able to test it. Amaia receives a description of the archive’s scope, its connection to Esparza, and the institutional decision to remove it, but no access to the underlying records. The claim that the files were irrelevant to police work is therefore not something she can verify against their contents. Their secrecy protects the Church’s account of its own inquiry while frustrating the independent examination Amaia needs.

The Archive Among Other Records

The wider investigation repeatedly turns on records that are absent, incomplete, destroyed, or withheld, but those situations are not interchangeable. In the Esparza investigation, forensic findings provide accessible details: the autopsy confirmed asphyxia, the pressure mark matched the nose of a teddy bear, and fibers found at the child’s lips belonged to the toy. The encrypted files, by contrast, are known through Sarasola’s account, not through inspection or forensic analysis. Their inclusion of the Esparza case does not establish what they say about those findings or about Berasategui’s role.

Other investigative records suffer different fates. Amaia’s team finds the dated boxes of Fina Hidalgo’s files empty after Fina says she cleared them; separately, a birth certificate for Ainara Martínez Bayón exists while evidence of her death in England cannot be found. These examples help distinguish destruction and documentary absence from the Vatican transfer: Berasategui’s files are not simply missing, since their custodianship and destination are reported, but they are unavailable to the police. The contrast makes control over records part of the investigative problem. A trail can be blocked by a burned archive, a missing certificate, or a known dossier moved beyond the investigator’s jurisdiction; each creates a different limit on what can be established.

Significance

The files embody the tension between psychiatric knowledge, religious secrecy, and criminal accountability. Their comprehensive scope suggests that they could illuminate Berasategui’s casework, while the stated interest of Vatican authorities links the archive to an inquiry into evil that the Church considered too disturbing for public scrutiny. The narrative does not disclose the files’ contents, so their significance remains bounded by that uncertainty. What is clear is their institutional fate: a potentially relevant record survives, but Amaia is told that the authority holding it outranks her own and that it has already been carried to Rome.