Ramona Coronado Garcia aka Monica del Raval. Few things like a popular nickname to define the essence of a person in the eyes of others. Few cases like this one. Mónica is the name Ramona chose to work as a prostitute in Barcelona after leaving her native Ciudad Real. And from the Raval the neighborhood from which today’s protagonist unexpectedly became an icon that represents an entire era in the city.
But today she passed away. Mónica del Raval has died at the age of 60 in Barcelona, after being retired since 2015 due to health problems. Whoever doesn’t know her will wonder why a whole city mourns the death of an ex-prostitute woman from Raval. But whoever knows who we are talking about will understand that what the city mourns is the disappearance of one of the last witnesses of a Barcelona that disappears.
From Ciudad Real to pop icon
Ramona Coronado García, Mónica, was born in 1964 in Villamanrique, Ciudad Real, and moved to Barcelona in the 90s. Here she settled in the Raval, where for more than three decades she worked as a prostitute.
Her characteristic appearance, heavily made up and with a silver crown peeking out of her platinum blonde hair made her a prominent figure in a neighborhood that has always resisted the gentrifying impulse of a Ciutat Vella eaten by tourism.
Despite the stigmas associated with her profession, Mónica never hid her work and, on the contrary, made it a central part of her public identity.
Fame came to her with the documentary “Mónica del Raval”, directed by Francesc Betriu in 2009, which offered an intimate look at her day-to-day life and consolidated her as an icon of Barcelona’s urban culture. She would also appear on the program Callejeros, where she would explain that she had had thousands of clients in her life.
In 2015, Monica retired from prostitution due to health problems that began to affect her life. In 2018, she was admitted for a condition that left her with irreversible sequelae and caused a hoax about her death to spread, which led her to withdraw from public life.
Since then, she has lived out of the spotlight. Even so, nothing has taken away her idol status and today that she has passed away, she is remembered for her fighting spirit, her ability to face adversity with humor and resilience, and for representing a Raval and a Barcelona that is already about to disappear in the same sky as Monica.