Pilar Prades

Pilar Prades Expósito or Santamaría (1928 – 19 May 1959) was a Spanish maid, sentenced to death for murder through arsenic poisoning. She was the last woman executed in Spain.

Biography Born into a humble family in Bejís, she moved to Valencia to enter service when she was twelve years old. Illiterate and introverted, she changed houses several times until 1954 when she began working for Enrique Vilanova and Adela Pascual, a married couple who ran a farmhouse on calle Sagunto in Valencia. Prades worked in their home and even attended the counter of the delicatessen when customers lined up. On March 19, Adela fell ill with what was initially diagnosed as influenza and then died. After her death, Enrique kicked Prades out of the house,

Prades then began work at the home of the military doctor Manuel Berenguer and his wife Mª del Carmen Cid, recommended by Aurelia Sanz Hernanz, the cook. Soon, Aurelia fell ill. Berenguer, alarmed, took Aurelia to hospital, where she experienced some improvement. When his wife began exhibiting the same symptoms, he consulted other specialists and they performed a diagnostic test to confirm the presence of poison.

In popular culture Prades' life inspired the radio serial usually called La galleguita de la cara sucia ('The little Galician girl with the dirty face')