She wrote numerous essays, children's literature, screenplays, and a biography of the poet Miguel Hernández.

[4] She studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Madrid from 1934 to 1936 where she was a student of José Ortega y Gasset and Américo Castro.

She developed an interest in Communism and leftist politics and worked at Cultura Popular, an organisation that hosted cultural events and established libraries for soldiers and workers in the war effort.

She started writing poetry and published her first poems in the magazine Hora de España in 1937 with the help of poet José María Quiroga Pla.

[3][2] She returned to Madrid after the end of the war and in the early 1940s worked as a teacher, translator, and seamstress.

[3] Zardoya continued writing, and in 1944 published her first book, Cuentos del antiguo Nilo (Tales of the Ancient Nile), using the pseudonym Concha de Salamanca.

Her 1947 poetry collection Dominios del llanto was runner-up for the Premio Adonáis de Poesía.

[1] She regularly wrote for cultural magazines[5] and published books on contemporary Spanish poetry and the history of North American literature.

[1] In 1980, Zardoya chaired the Association of Friends of Miguel Hernández and won the Café Marfil Poetry Prize with her book Ritos, cifras y evasiones.

Her final poetry collection, Ronda del arco iris, included 33 short compositions dedicated to children and was published in 2004.