100 Years Ago in Madrid
This year, the Spanish Ministry of Cultural Affairs is hosting a series of talks and exhibitions to honour the women who founded the Lyceum Club Femenino in 1926. Inspired by London’s Lyceum Club, María de Maeztu and other leading women from Spain’s cultural and intellectual elite created a space dedicated to advancing women’s rights. Writers, artists, lawyers, and thinkers, they challenged the conventions of deeply Catholic Spain and helped reshape its cultural and political life.
Among its members were poets of the Generation of ’27, including Ernestina de Champourcín and Concha Méndez, as well as influential lawyers such as Victoria Kent and Clara Campoamor. Kent, one of the first women elected to Parliament, opposed women’s suffrage—a stance forcefully challenged by Campoamor, who later represented Spain at the League of Nations. Spanish women gained the right to vote in 1931.
The Lyceum was dismantled after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and many of its members were forced into exile.
To find out about the programme, please click here. If you are in Madrid and happen to attend one of those events, we would love to hear about it.
