Margarita Nelken (1894–1968)

Margarita Nelken was born María Teresa Lea Nelken y Mansberger in Madrid, Spain. Her well-to-do parents were of French and Spanish, both of German-Jewish descent. She studied music, painting and languages in Paris, learning to speak French, German and English besides Spanish. She began writing about art at an early age and published her first article in a magazine in 1911. In 1919, she published her first full-length work, La condición social de la mujer en España (The Social Condition of Women in Spain), and gave birth to a daughter. A couple of years later, she had a son. She joined the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and as a candidate of the Badajoz Socialist Group, in 1931, she was elected to the first of three terms in the Cortes (Spanish Parliament). Although a staunch feminist, she opposed granting women the right to vote on the grounds that too many would be swayed by their priests. She founded Spain’s first day-care center for working mothers in Madrid. In 1934, she joined the National Committee of Women against War and Fascism and after the Asturian Revolution in that year, she was accused of military rebellion and sentenced to 20 years in prison. She fled to France, Scandinavia, and the Soviet Union, returning to Spain in 1936 to stand for election in the Popular Front. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, she took part in the siege of Madrid and helped organize the transfer of the artistic treasures of Toledo to a bank vault to protect them. That year, she left the PSOE and joined the Communist Party (PCE). She served in the Cortes until 1939, and was exiled along with her sister Magda Donato (pen name of Carmen Eva Nelken) at the end of the civil war. In Paris, she worked as a journalist and art critic before settling in Mexico. She continued to write novels, essays, and nonfiction.