The film, helped by a strong performance in the lead by Aurora Bautista as the sexually repressed title character, was a critical and commercial success and brought Picazo to the forefront of the new Spanish cinema.

He returned to directing with El hombre que supo amar (The Man Who Knew Love) (1976) a biopic of John of God that was produced by the saint's religious order which also backed the film's distribution.

Picazo's fourth film, (Los claros motivos del deseo) (The clear motives of Desire) (1976), about adolescence life in the provinces, fared no better at the box office.

[5] This new commercial failure brought the director back to his work on television until, thanks to the Miró's law, he was able to shoot his fifth film Extramuros (Outside the walls) (1985), adapted from the novel of the same name by Jesús Fernández Santos.

[6] The film, starring Aurora Bautista as tyrannical mother superior of a convent of sexually repressed nuns whose authority is challenged by two younger women, played by Mercedes Sampietro and Carmen Maura.