She's fairly well known around València in Spain for her appearance on the Valencian talk show Parle vosté, calle vosté in the late 1990s. She was one of a number of trans women on the show, which was doing an episode entitled "Deixaria que el seu fill es canviara de sexe?" which (I think) roughly translates to "Would you let your child change sex?"
The more things change, eh?
You can watch the full programme on YouTube but it is nearly four hours long and there's no English translation as far as I'm aware. I can't fully tell what's going on, but there's a lot of people shouting at one another and some obviously venomous transphobia from some of the cis contributors. So, after more than two hours of that, Manuela starts to talk and she is pissed and it is so good! This video is a ten minute excerpt of the highlights, with English subtitles.
Don't worry about that guy, he was definitely lying about having glass in his eye.
Manuela later became a local councillor, and she's still going to this day. Making art, and making that iconic red outfit look incredibly restrained.
Shout out to the other contributors in the clip:
- Deborah (Travesti. "Madame") whose glass was the second thrown.
- Mar (Empresària. Transexual) who threw the second pair of glasses.
- Kim (Professora d'institut. Transexual) whose glass was the fourth thrown.
- Manolita Chen (Transexual. Ama de casa) who tries to calm Manuela down.
- Raquel (Vedette. Transexual) who holds Manuela's hand.