He began his studies of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Barcelona when he was living in Lleida, taking the exams as an external student in the first year.

[3] His university colleagues included Miquel Batllori, Carlos Clavería, Juan Ramón Masoliver and Ana Maria Saavedra.

He graduated in 1930 with academic excellence, and went to Madrid the following year to get a doctorate at the Central University, where he was a disciple of, among other teachers, Ramón Menéndez Pidal.

[13][16] He analyzed the work of relevant authors of Spanish poetry, such as Federico García Lorca, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Valle Inclán.

Parallel to his literary studies, he worked in four other major fields: first, there are his autobiographical works, such as his Memoria de una generación destruid (1966);[13] second, the issues on the current cultural scene, of journalistic type; thirdly, travel literature (Díaz-Plaja considered travelling "a way of getting knowledge of the world, of trying to capture, under the most superficial chromaticisms, the common roots on which humanity is based"),[20] made up of essays on countries from the five continents and, finally, poetry.