He read the first books that were to influence him: Jack London, Emilio Salgari, Robert Louis Stevenson, and José de Espronceda.

[1] He made friends with members of the Cádiz magazine Platero, namely Fernando Quiñones, Pilar Paz Pasamar, Felipe Sordo Lamadrid, Serafín Pro Hesles, Julio Mariscal, José Luis Tejada, Francisco Pleguezuelo and Pedro Ardoy.

[1] Around 1954 Caballero Bonald served as Secretary and later as Deputy Editor of the Papeles de Son Armadans magazine.

[2] In February 1959 in Collioure (France), he attended the 20th anniversary of the death of Antonio Machado, along with Blas de Otero, José Agustín Goytisolo, Ángel González, José Ángel Valente, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Alfonso Costafreda and Carlos Barral.

There he started his friendship with the Colombian group of the Mito magazine (composed of Jorge Gaitán Durán, Gabriel García Márquez, Eduardo Cote Lamus, Hernando Valencia Goelkel, Pedro Gómez Valderrama and Fernando Charry Lara, among others).

[1] Between 1965 and 1968 he spent time in Cuba and became part of an organization aimed at paying homage to Antonio Machado in Baeza in 1966, which was finally prohibited by government order.

He published the Narrativa Cubana de la Revolución (Cuban Narrative of the Revolution) in 1968, and was again arrested for political reasons, and imprisoned for one month in Carabanchel jail.

He worked as a Contemporary Spanish Literature Professor at the Centre for Hispanic Studies at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania from 1974 to 1978.

In Madrid, the National Drama Center performed his version of Abre el Ojo (Open Your Eye), by Rojas Zorrilla.