[2] She studied music, painting and languages,[2] and she learned to speak French, German and English besides her native Spanish.

[3] Nelken wrote books of fiction with a socio-political orientation in the 1920s, including La trampa del arenal (The sand trap, 1923).

[8] In 1931, she became a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE)[9] and ran for office in the partial elections in October 1931 as a candidate for the Agrupación Socialista in Badajoz.

[16] In March 1937, she published an article in the magazine Estampa interviewing Anita Carrillo, a captain in the Spanish Republican Army, who was injured in but survived the Málaga–Almería road massacre, (the Desbandá), an attack by Nationalists on the republican-dominated city of Málaga, Spain and its citizens on 8 February 1937.

[2][5] She also wrote a book: Los judíos en la cultura hispánica ("The Jews in Hispanic Culture"), which was republished by AHebraica in Spain in 2009, over thirty years after her death.