Born on 8 April 1878 in Barcelona to a well-off family, son of Juan Antonio Zulueta y Fernández and María Dolores Escolano y de la Peña.

[16] Following the proclamation of the Spanish Second Republic in April 1931, he was proposed as Ambassador to the Holy See by the Provisional Government, but the Vatican rejected the Agrément because he was a disciple of Giner de los Ríos.

[17] His application had counted with the endorsement of Francisco Vidal y Barraquer, the Archbishop of Tarragona, and by Federico Tedeschini, the Apostolic Nuncio in Madrid.

After Zulueta's exit from the ministry in June 1933, he was destined as Spanish Ambassador to Nazi Germany, where he barely served for three months.

[19] Years later, he wrote the memoirs of his brief spell in Berlin, "Mis recuerdos del Führer" (1954), leaving a portrait of Adolf Hitler and the pervasive manipulation techniques of nazism.

Zulueta was forced out from the Palazzo di Espagna in Rome by Francoists upon the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and decided to go in exile,[21] moving to Paris.