He was also nominated Gentilhombre de cámara con ejercicio (Gentleman of the Bedchamber) during the reign of the King of Spain Alfonso XIII.

[1] His three-year older brother, Antonio Ortiz-Echagüe, wanted to be a painter, even though in the family of the father and the mother there had been no known artists but several militaries.

When the plane caught fire, Ortiz-Echagüe not only managed to rescue himself as well as the engine undamaged, but he also brought it to Morocco and – in the middle of a military operation – used this for the construction of a new aircraft.

After his final return from North Africa, he founded in 1923 the aircraft manufacturer Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA (CASA) in Seville (licensed manufacturer by Bücker, Dornier, Heinkel, Junkers; today its successor EADS CASA is a partner in the construction of Airbus aircraft as a branch of EADS).

Being a pioneer throughout his life, in 1959, once again he was flying at the age of 72 years as a co-pilot in an F-100 Sabre of the United States Air Force, which – as happened at that time with all American combat aircraft in Europe – had been repaired at the CASA factory.

[citation needed] Ortiz-Echagüe believed strongly on the one hand that Spain must modernize itself in accordance with the spirit of the times – inter alia by founding industrial companies – but on the other hand was well aware that a broad modernization could lead to disappearance of traditional clothing, a change in the villages and even a transformation of the landscape.

Soon its use would become outdated, however he followed that technique throughout his art, giving a special hue and a greater contrast result to his positives, which now makes his work easily recognizable.

Both paper-making as well as the procedure of obtaining photographs required a lot of patience, an extraordinary ability and a perfect management of that particular technique.

But furthermore this printed image with the paper still wet, could be retouched using brushes and cotton swabs or scrapers, giving a lot of freedom for creativity.

The ability to intervene in the outcome of a photograph, the greater richness of tones given from the pigment and its stability were the main reasons that Jose Ortiz-Echagüe used this technique.

In his last 20 years (until 1970), he used simultaneously, a Linhof Technika and – at that time press photographers were very popular in the USA – a Graflex Speed Graphic camera.

In Berlin in 1929 an exhibition of his photographs was held and after that, his book 'Spanische Köpfe – Bilder aus Kastilien, Aragonien und Andalusien' was published.

[7] The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City organized in 1960 a retrospective exhibition entitled 'Spectacular Spain', in which Ortiz-Echagüe appeared alongside artists such as Goya.