Internal Affairs Department

The Internal Affairs Department enters the investigation through a discovery on Jonan Etxaide’s computer: he had remotely accessed Amaia Salazar’s work machine, including her email and stored folders, and copied files. The Department connects that access to a search whose target appeared to have advance warning. Its inquiry makes an apparently technical finding a personal and professional crisis for Amaia, who must reckon with evidence implicating a colleague she trusted and whose death she is mourning.

The inquiry and its setting

The Department summons Amaia to a small, unventilated office where two of its officers are waiting. Clemos initially occupies the chair behind the desk, an arrangement that recalls a prior encounter in which Amaia had been placed in a comparable position. She declines to sit when invited, and the narrative makes the choice of where to sit significant: in a confined room, the person who chooses a position can shape the encounter. The detail frames the interview as an exercise in control as well as fact-finding, without changing the substance of what the officers have uncovered.

Clemos introduces Garrues, an information-technology specialist who has examined the computer used by Jonan, then explains that the Department has found something it wants Amaia to assess. After she confirms that Jonan, as her deputy, had regular access to her computer and often worked in her office, the two Internal Affairs officers ask Clemos and Garrues to leave. The exchange thus shifts from a technical explanation in the presence of the specialist to a more direct interview with Amaia. The available account identifies the participants and the method of questioning, but does not set out the Department’s wider organization or formal procedures.

Remote access and the suspected leak

The technical findings are specific. Jonan used a remote-access connection to enter Amaia’s email and some of the folders where she kept it, and he copied files. The specialist’s explanation rules out an accidental connection: both computers had to be switched on, the controlled computer had to accept the administrator’s access, and that authorization required a key. Amaia says Jonan had ordinary access to her workstation as her assistant, but that she never saw him use it. The Department’s evidence concerns a separate, concealed remote operation, not simply his authorized presence in her office.

The officers place that discovery beside an earlier incident involving a search. They have learned that the person targeted by the search seemed to know beforehand that it would take place. They also know Amaia initially suspected that someone in the Elizondo station, more specifically someone on her own team, had warned that person, before reconsidering and deciding she trusted her colleagues. The order for the search focused on a particular file. Before dawn, the person responsible for the premises carried out what was described as a cleanup, and that one file alone was burned. The Department does not present this sequence as proof of Jonan’s motive; it identifies why his access is relevant to the leak.

The officers’ case and Amaia’s response

The Department establishes a possible connection through timing: Jonan accessed Amaia’s email on the night before the search and again that morning. The officers conclude that he therefore knew the information. Amaia resists that conclusion, asking whether the operation could have been accidental or whether Jonan might have used her computer to leave her a file. She offers a practical alternative drawn from their work: large photographs had sometimes been difficult to download, and she had been waiting for enlarged images. The specialist’s account has already foreclosed an accidental visit, however, because the remote connection required an installed application and an evident authorization process.

The strongest measure the officers give is the frequency of the access. Jonan entered Amaia’s computer remotely as many as twenty times in the previous month, and he never told her. Asked whether she had authorized him, Amaia says no. Her defense does not rest on denying the access; she does not know why he did it and continues to search for an innocent explanation. The Department’s method is to set the technical requirements, the pattern of repeated use, and the possible leak beside her account, then ask her to confirm what those facts mean. Its evidence sharply narrows the possibility of accident, while leaving the reason for Jonan’s conduct unresolved in this exchange.

Consequences and narrative significance

The inquiry follows Amaia beyond the interview. At the gathering for Jonan’s parents, their account of their son’s admiration and respect for her recalls the Department’s question about whether she authorized him to enter her email. She feels disloyal even thinking of the accusation in their presence. Later, Iriarte asks what she makes of the Department’s theory; Amaia says she does not know and wants it to be a mistake. The investigation has therefore altered the meaning of an ordinary bond of trust: Jonan’s access is no longer merely an unexplained technical act, but a fact that may bear on a colleague’s death and the betrayal of a search.

The Department’s importance here lies in forcing that contradiction into the open. Amaia continues to defend the team and to imagine benign explanations, while the repeated, authorized remote visits make those explanations harder to sustain. The narrative does not resolve in these scenes whether Jonan passed information to anyone, why he accessed the computer, or what the full significance of the copied files was. Instead, the Department’s findings establish the grounds for suspicion and leave Amaia caught between professional evidence and personal loyalty.