This Spanish expression is used to describe someone as unpleasant physical appearance. In Granada, at the end of the eighteenth century there was a local character born in Alhendín called Picio (by Francisco or Sulpicio) who was sentenced to death for a crime, although at the last moment he was pardoned. All this event produced a nervous breakdown for which he ended up losing his hair and with tumors all over his face, and became the mockery of the people for his ugliness. This would not have happened to be a local anecdote, if it were not because already in the nineteenth century the actor and theatrical producer Isidoro Máiquez added a parliament mentioning Picio in a staging in Granada, where he heard the comparison of that anecdote, and so made him famous on tour throughout the peninsula, until works like El feo (Manuel Bretón de los Herreros, 1843) popularized the saying.
