Margarita Nelken Mansberger (Madrid, 1894 – Mexico City, 1968) was one of the most renowned intellectuals of the 20th century. A writer, art critic and politician, she was a member of parliament during the three legislative sessions of the Second Spanish Republic. Her works include Glosario (Obras y artistas) (Glossary (Works and Artists)) (1917), La condición social de la mujer en España: su estado actual; Her Possible Development (ca. 1920), The Trap of the Sandpit (1923), Around Us (1927), Spanish Women Writers (1930), Women Before the Constituent Parliament (1931) and Why We Made the Revolution (1936). At the end of the civil war (1939), from her permanent exile in Mexico, Margarita Nelken witnessed the deliberate oblivion to which her life and work were subjected during the dictatorship.

La vida y las mujeres (Life and Women) recovers a selection of her articles published in various newspapers and magazines—El Día, El Fígaro, La Libertad, La Voz de Ibiza and Nuevo Mundo—between 1916 and 1931. This edition is full of stories of human beings who, through their lives or work, expanded the possibilities of women's existence. Margarita Nelken always advocated for the improvement of women's socio-cultural status.

Alejandra Rodríguez Parragués is a historian and writer. She is a lecturer at the University of the Third Age at the Complutense University of Madrid and author of Vivir con la pluma. La profesionalización de las escritoras en la España del último tercio del siglo XIX (Living with the Pen: The Professionalisation of Women Writers in Spain in the Last Third of the 19th Century) (2023). She devotes her life to studying the life and work of the intellectual Margarita Nelken.