"I'll die with my boots on"

"No, no, no, no." Neus Soldevila laughs coyly when asked if she has a partner. Aged 69, she is wearing large hoop earrings, several rings, bracelets and a pink blouse with an embroidered collar. Time and again she apologizes for the sandals she is wearing - "This summer I broke a toe, I don't know how, and it keeps swelling up" - regretting that she had no time to change into the shoes she is carrying in her bag, before sitting down at a table in Café Zurich, in Barcelona.

Soldevila is La Dulce Neus - meaning "Sweet Neus," an epithet she was given by the press, due to her soft voice. Thirty-one years ago, in a rural property in Esplús near Huesca, her daughter Marisol, who was 14 at the time, killed Joan Vila, her father and Neus's husband, with a shot to the back of the head. This came after Neus experienced years of tyranny and abuse at the hands of her husband, a rich, self-made businessman in the construction industry.

Neus's daughter Marisol, who was 14, killed her father with a shot to the head

Neus was sentenced to 28 years in prison for convincing Marisol to kill her father, then concocting a tall tale that the murder had been the work of the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups (GRAPO), a Maoist terrorist group. The lie was based on the fact that her husband had been a member of Fuerza Nueva, an extreme-right organization.

"My mother held my hand and I pulled the trigger," said Marisol on a TV chat show less than a year ago. After the crime was committed, she was put in a reformatory. The other children, the twins Juan and Luis, 17, and María Nieves, 18, were also imprisoned.

Now pushing 70, Neus wears the same head of peroxide blonde hair as on October 1, 1986, when she fled Spain in a dramatic escape, accompanied by journalists, while on parole from prison, where she had spent four years. She went to South America, where she remained for almost two years using the name of Montserrat Ferrer. On May 8, 1989, having been arrested for selling phony emeralds, she was extradited back to Spain.

She now remembers all this with amusement, which is shared by her sister Carmen, 76. They were both born in Torelló, a town in inland Catalonia. "I've been in all the prisons in Spain," she says with a laugh, looking back on a life that includes a murder, countless scams, escapes, media-hungry lawyers, such as Emilio Rodríguez Menéndez, children who have turned their backs on her, love affairs, and the attentions of the press. And she always thought she would be the lady of a country house.

This has given her plenty of material to write about. "I began to write a diary in prison, but I never planned on publishing it." Since then she has brought out three books, all of which are self-published. Her sister types them out - "and I change a few words," adds Carmen. She then promotes them and sells them herself, at "fairs, festivals, whatever." But all of her business dealings are done strictly in cash - she is worried that any official income might be embargoed.

"Usurers and swindlers," have exploited her "case," she claims

Leaning in close to her interviewer, staring deep into her eyes and speaking in broad Catalan, Neus lays out on the table a pile of bills sent by the municipality of Granollers, outside Barcelona. She owned several properties with her first husband, for which she owes the local taxes on at least nine parking spaces. "They're not mine, but they're in my name. This is one hell of a mess," she confides.

Neus says that in recent years she has only encountered "usurers and swindlers," all of whom have exploited her "case," leaving her without a cent.

Debts have been the one constant in her eventful life. After the murder, there were claims in the media that Neus had created a pyramid scam behind the back of her husband, to whom she had been married for 19 years, and that this was one of her motives for doing away with him.

"There may have been some truth in that, but it was blown up out of all proportion," she says curtly.

Displaying a clear entrepreneurial spirit - "I like to have my businesses" - Neus ran a fashion workshop in Colombia and a costume-jewelry shop in Barcelona after the crime, and attempted to finish off a real estate promotion that her husband had left unfinished. Numerous paid TV interviews have also helped her to keep the piggy bank full.

But all that is over. She closed the workshops - "I have no time for that any more" - and began to spend her days filling pages with her writing.

"She did nothing else," confirms Rosa Villagómez, 57, who lived with her for almost four years in a house at no. 212 Marina street in Barcelona. But one day Neus disappeared. "I opened the door of her room and saw she hadn't even left any clothes. I cried a lot. She never answered the phone," says Rosa, who has never seen her again. "She stole my heart. I wish she would come back."

A nearby apartment in Marina street was the home chosen by Neus and Tomás Busquets after their marriage in 1997. He described himself as a "shyster," who handled all of her affairs. "He insisted so much that I married again, which I had sworn I would never do," says Neus with a smile. She now lives with her sister in Ripollet, outside Barcelona. Tomás died in 2003, of cancer. "And I was left with debts," says Neus. That is why she suggested to Rosa that they share a flat. "But there were so many people around, that I could never feel at home. That's why I left."

Neus has grown old, and has been left with the support of her sister. She never hears from her six children.

Speaking on a TV chat show, Marisol said she blamed her mother for making her believe her father was a monster. "Oh, the poor kids," says Neus. "If he had lived, who knows what kind of a life they might have had," she wonders aloud, before adding: "All of us want to clear our consciences." She does not like to rake up the past, nor think about her ex-husband, whom she defines as a wife-beater.

She says she still finds the emerald episode funny. She remembers the red leather bag she carried when she sold them to the jewelry shop Terra Nova, in Quito. They gave her so much money that the banknotes didn't fit in the bag. Arriving at the hotel, she opened the door and began dumping them on the bed. "Never again have I seen so much money in one pile!" But the jewels were fakes, made of tinted glass, the police told her after she was arrested. Neus denies this, though she offers no details of where she bought them, or why she sold them if she really, as she says, wanted to have them mounted as earrings and a ring for her daughter. "They insisted on buying them," she argues. After her detention, she was sent back to Spain in exchange for the extradition of the deputy governor of the Bank of Ecuador, Juan Manuel Fornell, who was accused of embezzlement.

On September 5, 2000, her debt to society was finally paid off. "I don't want anyone to suffer what I suffered," repeats La Dulce Neus who, after often "weeping" about the nickname foisted on her by "the judge or the police," has ended up using it to sign autographs. Now, over two bottles of sparkling water, in a cafeteria in Barcelona, more than 30 years later, Neus affirms that she feels free. "I'll die with my boots on."