Miss Spain proud to be first transgender contestant to compete in Miss Universe pageant

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The Miss Universe pageant in Bangkok, Thailand, will be one of the firsts on Sunday.

The pageant has its first-ever transgender woman competing, who has been identified as Angela Ponce of Spain.

"What I feel by being the first transgender contestant at Miss Universe is a big sense of responsibility, it gives me a lot of pride, and personally I'm very proud to have made it here," Ponce said. "I've been in the press, on TV, and I've put the conversation on the table. It was a topic that was not spoken about, what does it mean being a transgender person."

Ponce believes that mindsets about the LGBT community are changing.

"Today, there are positive references. People speak about the LGBT community and the transgender community. Before it was always underground and never spoken about. I think that people are more and more informed. All these prejudices come from disinformation," Ponce said.

Although Ponce is proud of being a transgender woman, she said the hardest obstacle she has had to overcome is being born into a world that "wasn't prepared" for trans people.

"We don't have the same rights, but we have the same obligations. At school, disinformation is what becomes prejudice, the bullying, the fact that you feel alone, excluded. I always say that it's not that you feel like a woman. You already are a woman. A transgender is not a man or a boy who feels like a woman, she's already a transgender person," Ponce explained. "There are no wrong bodies."

Ponce has advice for all transgender girls and women.

"We have to be happy, feel free, go with the flow, have less prejudices, have more love and be more tolerant of everything," she said.

Catriona Gray was the winner of Miss Universe 2018.