The only woman deputy who was re-elected in the three legislatures of the Second Republic as a member of the PSOE, Margarita Nelken was one of the three women who managed to reach Congress in the general elections of 1931. She became a controversial figure by rejecting the female vote for fearing that he would opt for the monarchical and conservative parties at the polls: “Putting a vote in the hands of women today, in Spain, is to fulfill one of the greatest desires of the reactionary element.”
A privileged, polyglot skull, he is credited with the first translation of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Restless politics, when the war broke out he ended up militating in the PCE.
Reviled by both sides, she was the only female who participated in the last session of the Cortes, in the basement of the castle of Figueres. She went into exile and died in Mexico (1968) at the age of 73.
