Centenario Lyceum Club Femenino

The Fundación Ortega-Marañón is hosting, from 15 September to 22 January, an exhibition that commemorates the centenary of the Lyceum Club Femenino and champions the legacy of nearly 500 women who, led by María de Maeztu in 1926, helped to drive the social, cultural and political modernisation of Spain.

Known among their contemporaries as the Modern Women, these pioneers stood out in fields such as the arts, science, sport and thought. Their work turned the institution into a plural space for dialogue, harmony and the defence of civil rights.

The exhibition occupies the very historical space where the organisation was founded and is structured into five thematic areas: Pioneers, Our Club, The Members, Social Projects and Confiscation, Legacy and Memory. The tour addresses their influence during the interwar period and their disappearance after the Civil War, as well as bringing together previously unseen material such as the Zubiaurre census, membership cards, correspondence, photographs and original volumes from their library.

Curated by Tània Balló with the scientific advice of Carmen de la Guardia Herrero, the exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Ministry of Culture, the Fundación Ortega-Marañón and various institutional and family archives. The initiative constitutes an exercise in democratic memory that recovers the trajectory of the women whose work helped to lay the foundations for a free and egalitarian society.