They both have piercing eyes, a passion for fashion and a lust for lovers... and blood.
One is fictional – Villanelle, the female assassin played by Jodie Comer in hit TV series Killing Eve.
The other is Idoia López Riaño – once Spain’s most-wanted killer and the inspiration for Villanelle.
Like the TV character, Riaño was obsessed with her image and was nicknamed La Tigresa – The Tigress – for her sexual prowess.
As part of Basque terrorist group ETA, she was behind 23 murders, including at least 17 paramilitary police, and served 23 years in jail.
British author Luke Jennings wrote Codename Villanelle – which inspired Killing Eve – after reading about Riaño.
He said: “She was clearly a psychopath and completely, completely without empathy.”
And today, the sister of Riaño’s second victim relives her pain and tells how the murderer, then aged just 20, toasted his death with champagne.
Tugboat worker Ángel Manuel Facal Soto, 42, was shot as he ate a sandwich in the streets of Pasajes, near San Sebastian, in 1985.
Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Mirror, Carmen Facal said: “Riaño was much more bloodthirsty than the typical ETA terrorist.
"I’m sure Angel’s murder wasn’t something she was ordered to do but decided to do off her own bat to make a name for herself.
“After that woman and her accomplice killed Angel, the police told me they drove a mile down the road to a bar and celebrated it with champagne with their cohorts.”
Mum-of-two Carmen believes Luke was right to base his villain on Riaño, who was freed in 2017.
She goes on: “Mr Jennings has got it spot-on. I can understand the success of shows like Killing Eve. They’re entertaining and the sort of thing you can easily get hooked on.
“The vast majority of people can switch these programmes on and off with the push of a button because it’s just fiction. I was one of those who suffered at the hands of a bloodthirsty real-life psychopath.
“I’ve forgiven her because I wanted to live in peace and living with hate is not living. But I haven’t forgotten what she did.”
Riaño tried to justify Angel’s murder by falsely claiming he was a drug trafficker and police informant who “deserved what he got”.
Carmen admitted: “Angel was a drug addict but he was never a drug trafficker.
“He had worked for the family tug firm and everyone knew him in the port area of the town where he was killed. He was a bohemian and a good talker.”
Another of her brothers succumbed to cancer just 15 days before Angel’s murder. Carmen, who is married to Spanish racing driver Andres Vilarino, said: “They were very painful times in my life.”
Riaño, the daughter of a carpenter, was a teenager when recruited by separatist group ETA.
Its bloody campaign for independence in northern Spain and south-west France raged for 40 years, claiming 800 lives and wounding thousands. ETA declared a permanent ceasefire in 2011.
Riaño was in the so-called Oker commando unit when she killed Carmen’s brother but was with the notorious Madrid unit when it killed 12 police officers in a car bomb in the Spanish capital in July 1986.
Like Villanelle, who has a sexually charged obsession with ex-MI6 agent Eve Polastri, Riaño had a reputation for sleeping with police officers – then killing their colleagues.
Carmen said: “A person who’s capable of ****ing one policeman and then killing another has to be so callous and inhuman.”
Riaño was captured in Aix-en-Provence, southern France, in 1994, shortly before her 30th birthday.
She was extradited to Spain in 2001 and two years later was sentenced to 2,000 years for murder.
But she was released from prison in 2017 after expressing remorse in a letter to a judge.
She wrote: “I became involved with ETA at a very young age, full of romantic and idealistic ideas, and those who captured me knew straight away how to make me choose, ‘Would you prefer to save a few people as a firefighter or a whole town?
"We need committed kids like you’.”
But while she has forgiven her, Carmen said: “I don’t believe a word she’s said and I don’t believe the letter was genuine. You’d have to open up her head to see what she thinks.
“Everything about her life is incredible, a clear example of truth being stranger than fiction.” In a book about ETA, Juan Manuel Soares Gamboa, a former member of the Madrid unit, described Riaño as a “slave of her body and hair”.
He said men were attracted “every time she went outside with her leather jacket and figure-hugging trousers”.
Gamboa said: “When you’re with La Tigresa you’re not travelling with just her but with her 500 ways and forms of attracting attention.”
Describing one attack, he said Riaño jeopardised an ambush plan at the last moment – choosing instead to unload her machine-gun on the three targets. Her volatility matches that of Villanelle, who despatches victims with a cold brutality.
Killing Eve is nearing the conclusion of the third series – with Sandra Oh, 48, in the title role.
Co-star Jodie, 27, has picked up a string of awards for her highly acclaimed performance.
Carmen, meanwhile, is convinced there will be a film inspired by the life of Riaño.
Having renounced ETA, she is now believed to be living under a new identity with a relative in France, close to the Spanish border.
Carmen added: “It’s an area I frequented fairly often before the coronavirus lockdown and it’s feasible I might bump into
her one day.
“I really couldn’t tell you how I would react. Angel was the victim, I’m a survivor. But it’s been a very long and difficult path to where I am today in my life.”
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Killing Eve is on BBC1 at 9.15pm tomorrow
