Admired and Criticized
Although the opposite is often assumed, women were recognized in cultural and literary circles during the 1920s and 1930s. In Spain, many were read, reviewed, published, and valued as literary critics.
For example, in 1928 , a column titled “The Poets’ Secret” began in *La Gaceta Literaria *. The first author interviewed was Ernestina de Champourcin. This aroused the envy of Federico García Lorca, who wrote the following poem to Melchor Fernández Almagro, the magazine’ director :
"I think you don't care about me anymore.
If only I were Melgarejo!
If only I were Ernestina!
If only I were Maruja Mallo!"
However, they also encountered difficulties:
• Cultural venues such as cafés and social gatherings, where intellectual life flourished, were considered exclusively male domains. As a result, women had to establish their own spaces, such as the Women’s Lyceum Club, where they could pursue their cultural and intellectual lives.
• In other cases, they collaborated with their husbands on creative and translation projects without their names appearing in the bylines.
Madrid, the 1930s. The rooms of the Lyceum Club Femenino were much more than just a place for meeting: they hosted lectures, readings, concerts, and exhibitions, and served as a place where women connected to the cultural life of the time forged bonds of friendship, partnership , and creativity. The club thus became a space for meeting and women’s participation in intellectual and artistic life.
A room at the Lyceum Women's Club.
However, the real problem came later. During the civil war, that generation of female authors was scattered, and under Franco’s dictatorship, many were silenced or censored. Later, critics and historians also omitted women’s names, erasing their bequest.
In recent decades, thanks to various studies by research and knowledge dissemination, their importance and the role they played in their time have been recognized.