In the beginning, after the news broke, her relatives said she cried and refused to eat.

“I felt devastated,” Mrs. Giménez said. “They said it was a crazy, old woman who destroyed a portrait that was worth a lot of money.”

Today her celebrity has grown. She hands out prizes for a competition of young artists, who paint their own “Ecce Homo” portraits. Children, she said, come by her apartment near the medieval arch of San Francisco and cry: “Look, Cecilia. That’s Cecilia!”

Meanwhile, the longtime parish priest, who insisted that he did not formally authorize the touch-up, has been exiled to Zaragoza.

In an unrelated case, he has been accused of embezzling 168,000 euros in church funds in a criminal investigation that alleges he was the target of an extortion plot by a Roma clan. In recent months, the judge in charge of the case appealed to the pope to intercede, with the Vatican conducting its own civil investigation.

This Christmas, the image of her “Ecce Homo” is stamped on the town’s lottery tickets. The portrait also plays a bit part in a popular Spanish movie, with a couple of thieves trying to steal it.

“I can’t explain the reaction. I went to see ‘Ecce Homo’ myself, and still I don’t understand it,” said Borja’s mayor, Miguel Arilla, from his art-filled office.