Judge Markina

Judge Markina is both a crucial legal authority in Amaia Salazar’s investigation and a man whose immaculate public bearing conceals a history of devastating family loss. In a quiet meeting with Amaia, he weighs the evidentiary burden of disturbing infants’ graves; as he explains why that burden matters to him, the controlled judge gives way to a grieving son.

Identity and Public Bearing

When Amaia arrives at a quiet brewery for their meeting, Judge Markina is sitting alone at the back, dressed in a dark suit, waistcoat, and tie. His absent, thoughtful expression seems to soften his formality, while his elegance and sensual magnetism catch Amaia’s attention. She has to remind herself to concentrate on the case: the investigation’s advances and clues are being silenced by the most persuasive argument of all, death.

His courtly manner appears when he rises and moves to pull out a chair for her. Amaia stops him. The moment marks a small resistance to the polished social performance that surrounds him, even as she recognizes the attraction of his bearing. Her initial impression of him is therefore divided: his elegance draws her in, while the very perfection of his manners makes her wary.

The Investigation and Its Stakes

Amaia needs Markina’s support to move through an investigation in which progress has repeatedly been stopped. He agrees to authorize a search warrant for Doctor Hidalgo’s private files, but distinguishes that step from the much more difficult decision to exhume the dead. If death certificates are found in the files, Amaia argues, the bodies may need to be exhumed. Markina asks which graves she means, pointing out that the Esparza girl has only just been buried.

Amaia is referring to the daughters of the families she has identified, whose deaths their parents had almost celebrated. Markina does not dismiss her suspicions, but insists that a grave-opening order would require irrefutable proof that the girls were murdered. Exhumations cause alarm and pain for families; those involving babies would be especially difficult for any judge to authorize. He also warns that the press would bring intense pressure, a cost the authorities could accept only if they were absolutely certain about what they would find. His caution places the investigative need for proof beside the living families’ grief and the public consequences of an uncertain allegation.

The Loss Behind His Caution

As they walk in silence after the meeting, Markina tells Amaia about a loss from his childhood. He was twelve when his mother gave birth to his baby brother. His parents, already older, had been overjoyed, and the infant was three weeks old when he died. One morning his mother fed and changed him, then put him back to bed. Around midday, Markina heard her scream. He ran upstairs with his father and saw her trying to breathe life into the child, though even he could tell the baby was dead.

He remembers his father struggling to pull his mother away from the body while he watched, horrified and unable to help. His mother’s cries lasted for hours; the silence that followed felt worse. She would speak only to ask where her baby was. She stopped addressing or touching Markina and his father, and seemed to forget that they existed. Unable to accept the natural death of a healthy infant, she blamed herself for not being a good mother. She attempted suicide and was admitted to a psychiatric clinic; in Markina’s account, grief, guilt, and the incomprehensibility of the death overwhelmed her until she forgot she was married and had another child.

Exposure and Narrative Significance

The disclosure changes the terms of Amaia’s view of Markina. Until then, his elegance, refined manners, and carefully controlled presence have made her suspicious of his apparent perfection. As he speaks, she sees that his eyes are bright with barely contained tears. He turns his gaze away, allowing her, for once, to study him closely. She recognizes a man who, like her, has imposed strict control on his present life to keep pain and stigma at a distance.

His childhood loss does not remove the evidentiary standard he sets for exhumations; instead, it makes the stakes of that standard personal as well as judicial. Markina’s account gives emotional context to his insistence that the authorities be certain before disturbing the graves of babies. The scene also breaks open the contrast between public authority and private vulnerability: the formal judge who weighs pressure from families and the press is at the same time a son who remembers his mother’s screams, her silence, and the brother whose death altered their household.