After completing law studies in Granada, Altolaguirre founded the magazine Ambos and returned to Málaga to start the printing shop Imprenta Sur ('Southern Press'), where he drew together many of his friends, publishing most of their early verse.
That same year, he co-founded with Emilio Prados the literary periodical Litorral, whose 1927 triple issue commemorated the three hundredth anniversary of the death of Luis de Góngora, a poet greatly admired by the Generation of '27.
After a two-year stay to Paris with his portable printing press, Altolaguirre lived in Madrid, where he produced Soledades juntas, including love poems perhaps inspired by his fellow poet Concha Méndez, whom he married in 1932.
In 1616 (the name commemorates the year of the deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare), he published poems by Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda, Jorge Guillén, Pablo Neruda, and Moreno Villa, among others.
Altolaguirre also wrote a propaganda play El triunfo de las germanías ("The Triumph of the Brotherhood of the Guilds") with José Bergamín in 1937, and screenplays for six motion pictures from 1951-1959.