PlaMeseguer TeresaM

Spanish military resistant and a noted intersex person, Pla became a member of the Maquis, who were guerrillas exiled in France after the Spanish Civil War who continued to fight against Francoist Spain until the early 1960s. Due to Plas intersex status, a family friend warned his father of the hardship that could come from military service. Therefore his father registered him in the civil registry as Teresa Pla Meseguer, of female sex. He only went to school for a fortnight, as his profession as a shepherd did not leave him any more free time, nor was the teasing about his appearance comfortable for him. Thus he spent his life in solitude in the mountains of Vallibona and Turmell de Chert, and he grew up with little social interaction. Due to her non-normative sexuality, Teresa Pla faced many problems. She was humiliated in 1949, by a lieutenant of the Civil Guard near Castell de Cabres. After the burning of Mas del Cabanil by the Civil Guard, Pla changed his female clothes for male ones and went from being Teresot to Florencio, acting as a Maquis for twenty months in the mountains of Maestrazgo, under the name of Durruti or La Pastora, as a member of the XXIII Section of the Association of Guerrillas of Levante and Aragon (AGLA), led by Jesús Caellas Aymeric, Carlos el Catalán, until his companions went to France and he stayed in Andorra keeping cattle in two farmhouses and smuggling tobacco and nylon. Pla was captured in 1960 in Andorra and handed over to the Spanish authorities. Numerous atrocities were attributed to him, none of which he was involved in, at the time of the Franco dictatorship. After his death penalty was commuted, he spent 17 years in prison, and died on 1 January 2004 at age 86. Link to Wikipedia biography (Spanish) Read less