Zabalza

Zabalza, a subinspector in Amaia Salazar’s team, contributes to the investigations through practical evidence work and follow-up inquiries. He helps examine recordings, joins fieldwork, and is among the officers involved after Jonan Etxaide is found shot at home. The glimpses of him are concise but varied: a colleague trusted with difficult material, an investigator willing to pursue uncertain leads, and a person whose wedding plans surface amid the cases.

Position in the investigative team

Zabalza is included in the working group Amaia assembles to examine recordings and audio. She asks him to see what can be done with both, including whether the material can be amplified, and directs him to accompany her with Jonan Etxaide and Fermín Montes. The assignment places him within the team’s practical response to uncertain evidence: the investigators suspect a witness may be misleading them, but they still pursue the possibility that the recordings contain something useful.

His work is shown as collaborative rather than isolated. In the recording investigation, a sound that remains unintelligible despite repeated attempts to increase its volume leads the team to consider a different method. Zabalza has worked on images from the cells and, because the picture is clear enough, seeks help from a friend who works at ONCE to read the speaker’s lips. The result is a specific statement attributed to Valentín Esparza: he had given his daughter to Inguma, like many other sacrifices. Zabalza also reports that a search of the system yields no person or alias under the name Inguma. The scene moves from an apparently unusable recording to a lead that is meaningful but unresolved: the words can be recovered, while the identity or significance of Inguma cannot be verified through the system.

Evidence work and investigative leads

The method matters to Zabalza’s role. Rather than treating the failed audio enhancement as the end of the inquiry, he turns to the visible evidence and arranges for specialist assistance with lip-reading. His contribution is not presented as a dramatic revelation made by instinct; it is a chain of practical steps, from reviewing the footage to asking for another form of expertise and then checking the name that emerges against available records. The finding raises the stakes of the investigation without settling what the term means.

Zabalza also takes part in follow-up visits connected to a report Jonan prepared. The team visits two families still living in the same villages, though both have changed address. At the home in Lekaroz, they encounter a family whose circumstances have changed markedly: the property is now a large mansion, and the investigators are allowed as far as the garage after explaining that they are looking into burglaries in the area. The vehicles there are conspicuously valuable, and the family is said to be involved in the pharmaceutical business. In Arraioz, the family is away on holiday; the team can inspect the property from outside and sees newly built stables. A groundskeeper confirms that the family is not at home. These details establish the scope and limits of the visits: the officers gather observations and contextual information, but do not conduct a full interview with the second family.

A separate investigative question concerns whether several children were in fact dead. Zabalza points out that, in the case of the girl associated with Argi Beltz, no death certificate has been located, because the parents’ account involves a journey to England. He raises illegal adoption or the possibility that the children were sold, noting that empty graves and stolen children have occurred in other cases. He frames these as possibilities rather than conclusions. The missing certificate and the parents’ account therefore remain grounds for checking the presumed deaths, not proof of what happened to the girl.

Jonan Etxaide’s death

Zabalza is among the officers drawn into the response when Jonan is found shot at home. The initial report says that Zabalza went to the house, saw that the door was ajar, and discovered Jonan lying on the floor after entering. The account emphasizes that the door appeared closed at first, although it was not secured; when Zabalza knocked, it gave way. From the entrance, he could see into the room and immediately saw Jonan. His explanation supplies an important sequence of observations: the door’s misleading appearance, the way it yielded, and the view from the threshold.

The discovery places Zabalza at the threshold of a colleague’s death and makes him a direct witness to the scene’s first moments. The narrative returns to his account as the team reconstructs what happened, rather than leaving the discovery as a bare report. He is also seen intercepting Amaia beside the door during the investigation. Together, these moments show him contributing both as the officer who first finds Jonan and as a member of the team that examines the circumstances afterward. The evidence does not establish who shot Jonan or explain Zabalza’s role beyond discovery and subsequent participation.

Work between cases and personal life

Zabalza appears in the police workplace as well as at investigative scenes. He is at his computer in the offices when Amaia comes upstairs looking for her colleagues. In another brief scene, the subinspector stands by a door holding a porcelain cup, lifting it as if to explain why he is there. The small gesture gives the account a moment of ordinary workplace presence amid the urgent casework, without specifying what had brought him to that doorway.

A personal detail enters through the statement that he and Marisa have fixed a date for their wedding. The announcement is brief, and the evidence supplies no further information about Marisa or the plans. Its placement nevertheless sets a private commitment beside the continuing investigations: Zabalza’s life is not confined to police duties, even though the cases occupy most of the scenes in which he appears.

Narrative role

Zabalza’s importance lies in the connective work he performs across different kinds of evidence. The lip-reading lead depends on recognizing that a recording can remain useful even when its audio fails; the inquiries into the families distinguish observed circumstances from unanswered questions; and his account of Jonan’s discovery anchors the investigation in precise details about the house and its door. In each instance, his contribution advances the team’s work without resolving every uncertainty. The contrast between a name recovered from silent images, a death that lacks documentary confirmation, and a colleague found at home gives his appearances a consistent investigative function: he helps make incomplete evidence legible, while leaving its unresolved implications in view.