Mariana de Pineda y Muñoz, generally known as Mariana Pineda, (1 September 1804 in Granada – 26 May 1831 in Granada) was a Spanish liberalist heroine. May 26th, the anniversary of her execution, is a local holiday in the city of Granada. Biography Mariana Pineda was the daughter of Mariano de Pineda y Ramírez, a Granadan ship captain and knight of the Order of Calatrava, and María de los Dolores Muñoz y Bueno, from Lucena, who was much younger and of lower social status. For unknown reasons the couple were never married, but lived for a time in Seville, where they had a daughter who died shortly after birth. After moving to Granada, where they lived in separate houses, they had a second daughter, Mariana. Mother and daughter moved into Mariano Pineda's residence for a time, until Pineda denounced María Dolores and the two fled. On November 12, 1805, María Dolores was arrested and forced to return her daughter Mariana into the custody of her father. After Pineda's death, Mariana Pineda passed into the custody of one of his brothers, and subsequently into that of José de Mesa and Úrsula de la Press, young dependents of her uncle's, under whose charge she remained for most of her childhood. In October of 1819, a fifteen-year-old Mariana married Manuel Peralta Valte, a liberal army officer eleven years her senior. Five months later she gave birth to a son, José María, and the following year to a daughter, Úrsula Maria. In August 1822, her husband died, leaving her an eighteen-year-old widow with two young children. It was apparently during those three years of her marriage, which coincide with the Trienio Liberal, that Mariana joined the liberal cause, and after the restoration of absolutism under Fernando VII in 1823, she welcomed persecuted liberals into her home. In those circles she met a military man with a sterling record, Casimiro Brodett y Carbone. The couple wished to marry, but were unable to as Brodett was denied military dispensation due to his liberal affiliation and was forced to leave the army and Spain for Cuba. For the following two years, Mariana left Granada, and there is no record of what she was doing or where. After her return to Granada, in 1828 Mariana assisted in Captain Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor's escape from prison by sneaking friar's robes to disguise him. Fernando was a noted liberal who