“I am very happy with how the Mural turned out,” says Marcos Chelo aka Akimbo, of this new mural, his first large format, in Valencia, Spain. A tribute to trans people in general and to Margarida Borrás in particular, this multicolored deity of style is likely more a feature of Akimbo’s modern tastes and imagination than what Borrás wore in the 1450s, where the prized yet persecuted beauty is said to have visited many a home of noble society in Valencia.

Commissioned by the Intramurs festival, Senorita Borràs overlooks the open-air parking lot of the vendors of the nearby Mercat Central de Valencia not far from Plaza del Mercat where public records say she was hanged in 1460. “I represent Margarida interpreting her image from my erotic-festive galactic imaginary,” says Akimbo in his Instagram posting, “turning her into a futuristic Saint, returning her the mystic quality and the honor that Christianity took from us hundreds of years ago.”

According to Ferran Bono in El Pais, the spot has been formally recognized by the city and named for the trans woman, which we translate here: “The priest Melcior Miralles recorded such a tragic outcome in his 15th-century work Crònica i dietari del capellà d’Alfons el Magnànim: ‘In the year 1460, Monday, July 28, in the Valencia market, Margarida was hanged, and she was man, and his name was Miquel Borras, who was the son of a notary from Mallorca and was dressed as a woman, and he was in many houses in Valencia dressed as a woman, which was known, and he was imprisoned and tortured. And because of the said Margarida or Miquel, some were imprisoned and tortured’.

A few years ago, the Valencian researcher and writer Vicente Adelantado investigated the Manuals de Consells of the old juries that ran the city and the municipal archive to prepare his doctoral thesis on the origin of theater in Valencia and found traces of Margarida.”

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