Background
Grau was the daughter of Paulina Alsina and Francisco Grau-San Martin.
Grau was the daughter of Paulina Alsina and Francisco Grau-San Martin.
Grau was involved in politics from her adolescence and spent four separate periods in exile. She opposed the Machado regime and the Batista regimes. She later supported the Cuban Revolution, but then opposed the Castro regime.
She was also accused of involvement in a plot to poison Castro with a milkshake.
They were tried, and each was sentenced to 30 years in prison. She was released during the wider release of political prisoners in 1978, thanks to the assistance of Bernardo Benes.
She died at the Villa Maria Nursing Center located on the grounds of Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove, Miami, Florida, of congestive heart disease. In 2008, the City of Miami named a street after her: "Ramon and Polita Grau-Alsina Avenue".