[7] Juan Martínez Penas, a Galician businessman and owner of the Teatre Tívoli in Barcelona and a Ritz hotel resident, used his relationship with Broto to hide his homosexuality.
They would get her drunk enough to cooperate, have her lead them to the safe, beat Broto to death, then bury her in an orchard by Guerra's house in Calle Legalidad.
[1][6] On the afternoon of January 10, 1949, Manau called Broto to say he was about to marry his girlfriend Pepita and move to Mallorca, but he wanted to spend one last night partying with her.
They immediately drove to the garden in Calle Legalidad, the agreed place to meet Manau's father, checked that she was dead, took her jewelry, and buried her.
[6] The newspaper La Vanguardia published articles questioning the police's findings,[11] leading to speculation of Broto's murderers' motives.
[1] Another rumor was spread by Jesús Navarro Manau himself, who went as far as to affirm that Broto was "eliminated" because she was a confidante of the police and an informant for the regime's enemies, responsible for the execution of several people.
[13] The director and producer Pedro Costa dedicated an episode of the anthology television series La huella del crimen, starring Silvia Tortosa and Sergi Mateu, to the murder.
The event was also fictionalized by Alberto Speratti in his work El crimen de la calle Legalidad (Barcelona, Martínez Roca, 1983).
Juan Marsé was inspired by this crime for the plot of his novel Si te dicen que caí (If they tell you that I fell),[14] adapted for the cinema by director Vicente Aranda.