Margarita Nelken

Margarita Nelken (5 July 1894 – 5 March 1968) was a Spanish feminist and writer. She was a well known intellectual and a central figure in the earliest Spanish women's movement in the 1930s.

Early life and education Nelken was born María Teresa Lea Nelken y Mansberger in Madrid in 1894. Her other works include La condición social de la mujer en España (The social condition of women in Spain, 1922) She also wrote books about Spanish women writers and Spanish women politicians as well as short stories. Being fluent in both French and German, Margarita also authored the first complete translation into Spanish of Kafka's seminal work The Metamorphosis and The Trial in 1925.

Political career In 1931, she became a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and ran for office in the partial elections in October 1931 as a candidate for the Agrupación Socialista in Badajoz. She also achieved a position in the Parliament in the elections of November 1933 and February 1936.

Exile and death She served in the Cortes until the end of the war in 1939. Then she and her sister, as Republicans and socialists, went into exile in Mexico. She also wrote a book: Los judíos en la cultura hispánica ("The Jews in Hispanic Culture"), which was republished by AHebraica in Spain in 2009, over thirty years after her death. Nelken died in Mexico on 9 March 1968.