A leading figure of the boom of short novel collections in Spain,[1] and a representative of the bohemian literary scene in the country,[2] he spent a substantial part of his life in Paris and, following the end of the Spanish Civil War, exiled in the Americas.

Eduardo María Zamacois y Quintana was born on 17 February 1873 in "La Ceiba" estate, near Pinar del Río,[3][1] Cuba, the only son of Spanish Pantaleón Zamacois y Urrutia (a Basque migrant to Cuba) and Victoria Quintana y González (a native Cuban).

In early January 1939 the republican Barcelona tribunal sentenced him to 6 years of imprisonment for defeatism, presented in his novels.

It is not clear whether he was incarcerated,[4] as he may have benefited from an amnesty declared for all prisoners over sixty years of age shortly before his sentence was passed.

In any case, after the fall of Barcelona he was able to flee to France, and then to the US and Mexico, before settling in Argentina, where he eventually wrote his memoirs, Un hombre que se va... (1964).