the pound project

In 2012, an 81-year-old widow in a small Spanish town tried to fix a flaking painting of Jesus on her church wall. She wasn’t a trained artist. She just didn’t want it to keep falling apart. Cecilia Giménez worked in broad daylight with the priest’s approval. She left it to dry, went on holiday for two weeks, planning to finish when she got back. She never got the chance. When the church saw what she’d done, they suspected vandalism. The original artist’s family considered legal action. The internet gave it a name: Monkey Jesus. The mockery devastated her. Family members said she cried constantly and refused to eat. Then something nobody predicted happened. Tourists started arriving. The town of Borja had been getting around 5,000 visitors a year. By 2013, that jumped to over 40,000. The church charged a small entry fee. The money funded places at the local retirement home for elderly residents. Cecilia received 49% of all merchandise profits. She donated much of it to muscular dystrophy charities because her son suffered from the condition. Her story inspired an opera that premiered in Las Vegas in 2023. She even staged an exhibition of her own original paintings in Borja. She passed away in December 2025 at 94. She had been widowed young and raised two children with disabilities on her own. The town’s mayor called her irreplaceable. The painting she “ruined” has never been re-restored. It stays exactly as she left it, behind glass, still drawing visitors from around the world.