Mireia Lalaguna Royo is Miss World 2015.
You remember Miss World, right? That's the beauty pageant with the recent controversy...no, sorry, were you thinking of the Miss Universe pageant? No, the "right" girl was given the crowd at Miss World, but the big issue was who didn't get to attend.
Not present was Miss Canada, Chinese-born Anastasia Lin, who had been prevented from boarding her connecting flight to Sanya from Hong Kong last month after China refused her a visa.
Lin is an outspoken critic of Chinese religious policy and a follower of the Falun Gong meditation practice, which was outlawed by China in 1999.
She said that after she won the Canadian title, Chinese security agents visited her father, who still lives in China, in an apparent attempt to intimidate her into silence.
China has hosted the competition seven times, starting in 2003, as part of its attempts to project a more modern, outgoing image. However, the controversy over Lin's attendance illustrates the authoritarian communist government's determination to do so on its own terms, regardless of the cost to the country's reputation.
Neither Beijing nor the London-based Miss World Organization has commented on the controversy.
It was the second consecutive year that outside events intruded on the competition. Last year's contest in London was marred by the murder the month before of Miss Honduras and her sister in that country.
