Her primary family (including her brother Álvarito and his wife Maria Araceli) was driven into exile in Mexico in 1939 by the Franco Government of Spain.
The summer of 1936, she and her friend, the poet Luis Cernuda, went to Paris to serve as secretaries to her father Álvaro Albornoz y Liminiana who was appointed the Ambassador to France for the Second Republic Provisional Government.
During the following turbulent political years of the Second Republic and the ensuing Civil War, Albornoz lived in Paris and Greece.
During this short stay she taught Spanish literature at the Escuela Libre de La Havana and there she became friends with Lezama Lima.
January 25, 1940, Albornoz and her Spanish-born parents immigrated to Mexico to join Alvaro and his wife, María Araceli de la Escosura Beckar.
In 1944, Albornoz became a professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, and an influential contact for many Spanish exiled scholars and intellectuals.
Albornoz and Gaya continued to Rome where they visited Maria Zambrano in her apartment at the Piazza del Popolo.