His brother Ricardo was a painter, writer and engraver, and his nephew Julio Caro Baroja, son of his younger sister Carmen, was a well-known anthropologist.

Pío was born in San Sebastián, Guipuzcoa, the son of Serafin Baroja, also a noted writer and opera librettist.

[5] He also managed the family bakery for a short time, running unsuccessfully on two occasions for a seat at the Cortes Generales (the Spanish parliament) as a Radical Republican.

This group of texts is considered a milestone in the renewal of Spanish novels, particularly, a turning point in the transition between realism and modernism.

His deft portrayal of the characters and settings brought the Basque region to life much as Benito Pérez Galdós's works offered an insight into Madrid.

[7]Ernest Hemingway was greatly influenced by Baroja and told him when he visited him in October 1956, "Allow me to pay this small tribute to you who taught so much to those of us who wanted to be writers when we were young.

As example, a fragment of an article in La Conquista del Estado can be mentioned:[12][13]...the question of the predominance of the language -Catalan- must be resolved over time...

But the State has not exerted pressure here, and if it has, it has not been as energetic as it has in France, Germany and England, with their regional languages...There are other examples of anti-Catalanism, in which it even goes so far as to describe Catalans as Jews,[12][14] at a historical moment when this was considered a serious racial insult.