« Shell moderately (narrowly when young) umbilicate, globose-neritiform, solid, opaque, faintly glossy, smooth (slightly adorned, under magnification, with some incremental marks and thin spiral threads), chestnut-brown, irregularly mottled with minute white blotches and bearing three almost indistinct spiral bands (at the periphery, onto the base and in sutural position) of alternatively pale and dark chestnut patches, and adorned with a whitish area around the rufous, weakly spirally furrowed umbilicus; spire loosely conical, a bit more acute apically; whorls 9, the first ones minute and flat, the following rapidly increasing, somewhat depressed at the suture, slightly convex below, the last whorl being large, ventricose, suboblique; aperture oblique, moon-shaped, of a size equal to ⅔ of shell height, whitish inside, with a simple, blunt, pale labrum; columella reddish or white with red edges, slightly sinuous anteriorly, calloused posteriorly, the callosity being moderately thick, weakly expanded laterally on the umbilicus, and narrowed below. Operculum calcareous, white externally, smooth, with a slightly thickened labial margin adorned with 4-5 striae. » – J. G. Hidalgo: “Description de deux espèces de Natica des mers d’Espagne”, Journal de Conchyliologie vol. 21, Paris 1873, p.332-333.

« I have the pleasure to dedicate this species to my friend, M. Prieto, who found it while searching shells for my work on Moluscos marinos de España. It will be figured on the plate 20 B (fig.2,3) of this publication. »