Manuel Delgado Villegas, called El Arropiero, confessed in 1971 to 48 killings. Spanish police investigated 22 of the cases he described and came to treat seven as proved, according to Infobae and Vice; Telecinco, in a 2026 report, put the proved cases at eight. He was never put on trial. After he had spent about six and a half years in custody without a defense lawyer, the Audiencia Nacional closed the case in 1978, found him not criminally responsible on psychiatric grounds, and ordered him held in a penitentiary psychiatric hospital. He died in a hospital in Badalona, near Barcelona, on February 2, 1998, at 55.
Spanish media have long described him as the country's most prolific serial killer. Telecinco was careful to say why: the title rests on the number of crimes he confessed, not on any conviction. No court ever found him responsible for a single death.
Delgado Villegas was born in Seville on January 25, 1943, the date reported by Telecinco and by Infobae, which said it came from his documents. Vice reported that the papers did not agree and that another date, in December, also appeared on his records. His mother was 24 and died giving birth to him, Vice reported.
His father sold arrope, a sweet syrup made from fruit, in the summer and scrap metal in the winter, according to Vice, and the son took his nickname from that trade: El Arropiero, the arrope seller. Telecinco described the product as an Andalusian fig sweet. The boy grew up poor in Seville. He never learned to read or write. Infobae attributed this partly to low intelligence and partly to a father who did not send him to school, and it reported that the father beat him. The father later sent him to live with his grandmother in Mataró, on the coast north of Barcelona, Vice reported. Mataró would become the town he returned to at the end of his life.
In 1961, at 18, he enlisted in the Spanish Legion, Vice reported. Infobae, in its 2023 account, wrote that he joined at 18 and learned to handle weapons there. How he left the army is disputed. Vice set out two versions: that he was declared unfit for service after seizures, or that he simply left.
What came next was a life on the move. Telecinco listed his work as legionnaire, construction laborer and stable hand, and described an itinerant life across Spain and several European countries. Vice reported that he slept rough and begged in Barcelona and in parts of France and Italy. He sold his own blood to private clinics; Vice cited the crime weekly El Caso as reporting that he had done so more than a thousand times. Infobae also reported that he became addicted to drugs.
Under Franco, vagrancy itself was a matter for the police. Vice reported that he was arrested several times under the Ley de Vagos y Maleantes, the vagrancy and social danger law, and that instead of prison he was repeatedly sent to psychiatric institutions, from which he was released.
The cases that police came to attribute to him spanned seven years and several regions, and the people who died had little in common. Telecinco noted that many were people on the margins of society, which made the events harder to reconstruct.
Adolfo Folch, a cook, died in January 1964 at Garraf, on the coast south of Barcelona. Telecinco and Vice both describe his death as the first killing attributed to Delgado Villegas. Infobae gave the date as January 2, 1964, and reported that his wallet and watch were taken; Vice reported that he had been asleep on the beach and that coins and his identity card were taken.
Margaret Boudrie, 21, a young Frenchwoman, died on Ibiza in 1967. Infobae described her as a traveler staying at a country house on the island and gave the date as July 20, 1967.
Venancio Hernández, a farmer, died in 1968 near Chinchón, south of Madrid. His death was first recorded as an accidental drowning, Infobae reported. In his confession Delgado Villegas said he had asked the man for food or money and had been told to go and find work. Vice described Hernández as a local man from Chinchón who had refused him charity. Infobae gave the date as July 20, 1968.
Ramón Estrada, a wealthy Barcelona businessman, died in Barcelona on April 5, 1969, according to Infobae, which said the case drew wide press coverage at the time. Telecinco also dated it to 1969 and called him a millionaire. Delgado Villegas told police, Infobae reported, that Estrada had paid him regularly and that the killing followed a dispute over money.
Anastasia Borrella, 68, worked in the kitchen of a bar in Mataró. She died on November 23, 1969, Infobae reported.
Francisco Marín, 24, was a friend of Delgado Villegas. He was attacked at El Puerto de Santa María, in the province of Cádiz, on December 3, 1970, and died afterward, Infobae reported.
Antonia Rodríguez, 38, known as Toñi, was the last. She had an intellectual disability and was his girlfriend. She died at El Puerto de Santa María in January 1971; Telecinco reported that she was strangled. Her death led to his arrest.
Telecinco reported that other crimes were attributed to him in Mataró, Valencia and Cádiz, beyond the named cases.
Delgado Villegas was arrested at El Puerto de Santa María on January 18, 1971, in the inquiry into Antonia Rodríguez's death, according to Telecinco. Infobae placed his questioning in late January 1971 and named the officer who led it, Inspector Salvador Ortega.
His first answer was an alibi. He said he had been at the cinema when she died and produced a ticket. Ortega, a film lover according to Vice, asked him about the film. He could not describe it, because he had not seen it, and the alibi collapsed. Infobae added that some of what he said about the timing could only have been known to the person responsible.
He then confessed to her death, and went further. He told the police he had killed many other people, about 48 in all, while admitting that he had trouble keeping count, Infobae reported. Vice recalled that El Caso ran a headline saying the number was hard to believe. Infobae described what followed as one of the largest criminal investigations Spain had seen.
The police could not test every confession. Of the 48 deaths he described, they investigated 22, Infobae and Vice reported, and treated seven as proved. Telecinco put the number of proved cases at eight. Some of the deaths he described had at first been recorded as accidents, as with Venancio Hernández.
He also spoke of killings outside Spain. Telecinco reported that he claimed to have traveled through France and Russia, among other places, and to have killed there, but that the evidence was too thin for those claims to be properly investigated. Vice wrote that doctors at first suspected megalomania, but that investigators came to believe his detailed accounts. Telecinco reported that some professionals thought he may have exaggerated his total, a point that remained unsettled.
After his arrest he waited about six and a half years for a defense lawyer. Infobae called this a record in Spain for a suspect held in pretrial detention without representation. Telecinco gave the period as six years, from 1971 to 1977.
Throughout that time psychiatrists and forensic doctors examined him, and they agreed, Infobae reported, that he was mentally unbalanced and not criminally responsible. Vice reported that doctors described him as mentally deficient, close to the level then called oligophrenia, and that he was found to carry an extra Y chromosome (the XYY pattern), which in the 1970s was linked by some scientists to crime. Telecinco, in its 2026 report, named the genetic finding as Klinefelter syndrome and said the link to violence was never scientifically proven. The two outlets do not agree on the name of the condition.
No trial took place. In 1978 the Audiencia Nacional, Spain's national court, ordered him held indefinitely in a penitentiary psychiatric hospital, describing him as mentally ill, Telecinco reported. Vice dated the ruling to June 1978 and described it as a provisional shelving of the case. Infobae said the court closed the case and committed him to the Carabanchel penitentiary psychiatric hospital in Madrid.
Under Spanish law he was declared inimputable: not criminally responsible. None of the deaths attributed to him was ever tested in court, and he was never convicted of any of them.
He spent about 26 years in psychiatric prisons and hospitals, Infobae and Vice reported. In 1993 the Spanish public broadcaster's program Dossier 21 recorded a long interview with him in a psychiatric prison, Vice reported. Telecinco recalled a television interview, given years before his death, in which he spoke of his fondness for gazpacho and denied eating it with human flesh. Infobae reported that he also spoke to Juan Ignacio Blanco, director of El Caso, through bars.
He was later moved to a psychiatric hospital in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, near Barcelona, close to the last relatives he had, distant cousins, Infobae reported. Vice tied the move to a reform of the Penal Code, which it said led to his release. Infobae reported that other patients called him the Robinson of the psychiatric hospitals, for his long hair, unkempt look and near total isolation.
Telecinco described his last years as a kind of judicial limbo between psychiatric hospitals and unsupervised leave. In the end he wandered freely through Mataró, an old man begging in the streets, and no one recognized him.
He died on February 2, 1998, at Can Ruti hospital in Badalona, at 55. Telecinco and Vice gave the cause as lung disease, which Telecinco tied to heavy smoking; Infobae reported pneumonia. According to Telecinco, the medical staff who treated him did not know who he was.
In 2009 the director Carles Balagué released a documentary, Arropiero, el vagabundo de la muerte, which traced his life through the crimes he confessed, Vice reported. Spanish and Latin American outlets have returned to the case repeatedly since. Telecinco, writing in 2026, called it an uncomfortable story for Spanish justice, one that ended quietly and without a trial.
The total of 48 is his own. The figure of seven proved cases (Infobae, Vice) or eight (Telecinco) reflects police findings, not court rulings; the Audiencia Nacional never heard evidence on any of them.
Dates for several attributed deaths differ between reports. Infobae dated Margaret Boudrie's death to July 20, 1967, the same day and month it gave for Venancio Hernández's death a year later, and dated Adolfo Folch's death to January 2, 1964; other accounts give other days.
His birth date is uncertain. Telecinco and Infobae give January 25, 1943; Vice reported a second date on his papers.
The military record is also disputed. Vice reported that he enlisted in the Spanish Legion in 1961 and left under circumstances accounts describe differently. Infobae wrote that he joined the French Foreign Legion.
Reports differ on the genetic finding (XYY in Vice, Klinefelter syndrome in Telecinco), on the cause of death (lung disease or pneumonia), and on how many interviews he gave. Infobae called his conversation with Juan Ignacio Blanco his only press interview, while Vice and Telecinco described a television interview.
January 25, 1943: born in Seville, by the date most reports give.
1961: enlisted in the Spanish Legion at 18 (Vice).
January 1964: death of Adolfo Folch at Garraf, the first killing attributed to him.
1967: death of Margaret Boudrie on Ibiza.
1968: death of Venancio Hernández near Chinchón, first recorded as a drowning.
April 5, 1969: death of Ramón Estrada in Barcelona (Infobae).
November 23, 1969: death of Anastasia Borrella in Mataró (Infobae).
December 3, 1970: Francisco Marín attacked at El Puerto de Santa María (Infobae).
January 1971: death of Antonia Rodríguez at El Puerto de Santa María.
January 18, 1971: arrested at El Puerto de Santa María; confessed to 48 killings.
1971 to 1977: held without a defense lawyer.
1978: the Audiencia Nacional closes the case and commits him to the Carabanchel penitentiary psychiatric hospital.
1993: interviewed for the public broadcaster's program Dossier 21 (Vice).
Later 1990s: moved to a psychiatric hospital in Santa Coloma de Gramenet; spends his last years at liberty in Mataró.
February 2, 1998: dies at Can Ruti hospital, Badalona, at 55.
2009: Carles Balagué's documentary Arropiero, el vagabundo de la muerte is released.