According to the legend, La Planchada was a woman who lived in the 1940s or 1950s in Mexico City. She was a beautiful, elegant, and kind-hearted person who worked as a laundress or a domestic worker. One day, she was brutally murdered by her husband or a suitor, and her body was abandoned on the streets.

: Eulalia is described as wearing a perfectly ironed, stiff, and impeccably clean vintage nurse's uniform—hence the name "La Planchada."

Feminist interpretations of the legend note that La Planchada is a critique of the "Martyr Nurse." She died because she felt guilty for being human (falling in love, grieving a death). The ghost continues to work for free, forever, because a woman's duty to care must never cease.