Born in Seville, 23-year-old Ángela Ponce currently holds the title of Miss Cadiz and hopes to be the first trans woman to win in the Miss World Spain pageant to be held in Málaga Sunday. Ponce is hoping that her participation in the event will help in bringing more visibility to others like her.
She told the Spanish news agency EFE that society “is not brought up to be educated about diversity.”
“This is what made me go public. I want to say, here I am and I am not weird, I only have a different history. A woman for whom life came about in another way, but I am a woman.”
Although Ponce was born in Seville, she is happy to represent the city of Cádiz, where she has reportedly spent many summers.
As reported by Chueca (in Spanish), Ponce has been working with the Fundación Daniela (Daniela Foundation) in Spain, raising awareness about both transsexual and transgender people in the country.
According to The Local, if Ponce is lucky and wins on Sunday, she would then go on to participate in the Miss World competition in China in December this year.
According to Ponce, she has known her whole life that she was a girl, even though she was born in a boy’s body, but said she didn’t know how to explain it when she was younger. She went on to explain to EFE how her family has supported her.
“When I was little, I would go with my brother shopping and my parents told me that I could get a toy. I remember going to the dolls and taking a Barbie and saying ‘this is what I want’. They never told me ‘no, boys play with balls and cars and girls play with dolls’.”
“My father took the Barbie and put together the doll with me. So amid the bad times, I’ve been very lucky.”
Ponce currently works as a model and also helps out at her parents’ restaurant and says she wants to attend university and study English.
