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This chapter investigates the queer features of Elena Fortún's New Girl character, Celia, as she appeared in Celia: Lo que dice from 1929. Another contemporary girl character, Leonor Serrano's Diana is used as a comparison to highlight Fortún's foothold in reform pedagogy. The comparison is also used to underscore how Fortún, with her Celia character, goes farther than Serrano in sketching out an independent individual striving for self-determination. The destabilizing characteristics of Celia will be compared with some of the main premises of present-day queer pedagogy. Fortún used a set of narrative devices in her portrayal of Celia as a queer New Girl. First is the conflict of expectations between Celia and adults, second is Celia’s fantasy world, and finally, we have the queer bonds of solidarity among children, animals, and elderly people. In her rendering of Celia, Fortún managed to create a literary portrait of the unlimited possibilities that children create for self-determination through play and fantasy. The conflict between Celia's deviant behavior and adult normativity that runs throughout the tales underscores the girl as a subaltern identity, but it also destabilizes adult power in a way that opens up an interpretation of Celia as a queer character.

During the early 1900s, Ellen Key's ideas about pedagogy, feminism, and child rearing were influential in Spain, although Key herself never visited the country. This chapter demonstrates how Key's concept of collective motherliness was received and reformulated by Spanish intellectuals within two different interpretative communities. The first was the community of reform pedagogues of central Spain who introduced Ellen Key to a Spanish audience during the first two decades of the 20th century, and the second were the anarchist and sexual reformist communities centred on the east coast who continued to further Key's legacy in Spain during the 1920s and 1930s. This chapter focuses on works by two authors, each representing one of these communities of Key's interpreters – Carmen de Burgos (1867–1932) and Federica Montseny (1905–1994). The interpretation of these authors' texts in the light of Key's ideas of collective motherliness highlights differences in how the two communities furthered Key's ideas. The reform pedagogues focused more on collective values, such as women's education and patriarchal oppression in society, while the anarchists and sex reformers focused more on individual aspects, such as free love and personal development.

Ellen Key (1849–1926) was one of Europe's most influential thinkers on issues of motherhood and women's sexuality during the early 1900s. This anthology maps how her ideas were reformulated in Europe's five major language areas – English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish – and explores how her ideas about social modernity and women's sexuality were received and how they were communicated in feminist literature and debate during the first decades of the 20th century. The aim of this anthology is to offer new knowledge about Key's influence on European thinking on issues such as motherhood, sexuality, and love in in the early 1900s by offering both a broader and deeper understanding of the international significance of Key's work.

During the early 1900s, Ellen Key's ideas about pedagogy, feminism and child rearing were influential around Europe. The same was true of Spain, although Key herself never visited the country. This article examines how Key's concept of collective motherliness was received and reformulated by Spanish intellectuals from two different generations: the first during the first two decades of the 20th century (1907-1920) and the second during the third and fourth decades (1920-1936). The focus is on works by two authors, each representing their generation of interpreters of Ellen Key: Carmen de Burgos (1867–1932) and Federica Montseny (1905–1994). The interpretation of these authors' texts in the light of Ellen Key's ideas of collective motherliness shows the reception and reformulation of these ideas in Spain changed between the two generations. The first focused more on collective values, such as women's education and patriarchal oppression in society, while the second generation focused more on individual aspects, such as free love and personal development.