Basque heroine, victim of the religious persecution of the first third of the 17th century. She was from Labastide-Clairence , in Lower Navarre, and was captured by Tristan de Urtubia , imprisoned and tried before the Parliament of Bordeaux, being eventually acquitted.
After this sad experience she went to live in Irun for twenty years, and then in Hondarribia for another seven, after which she was again accused of witchcraft first by the girl Isabel García, and then by Isabel de Arano, in the year 1611. One after another, other women living in Hondarribia who had managed to escape from the burnings of De Lancre fell victim. Terrified, they all confessed to their crime except Inesa who, despite all the coercion, refused to accept the accusation. This 45-year-old woman, married to a man named Pedro de Sanza, resists, in the confrontation organized at the town hall, all the terrible pressures exerted on her on May 10, 1611. Popular opinion holds her responsible for "losing ships" in the port of Pasajes, and she ends up being handed over to the Inquisition Courts of Logroño. But there, the inquisitorial fury has already ebbed, and not only are the accused women's property returned to them, but, in the end, they are pardoned. Inesa and her companions return to Hondarribia, where, the ecclesiastical verdict being rejected, they are all exiled to Hendaye. Here, all traces of Inesa Gaxen are lost.