Born in Vallehermoso, on the island of La Gomera, at the age of seven he moved with his family to Seville, where his father, a teacher, had found work.

The magazine enjoyed international readership and connected him and other writers of the Canary Islands with intellectuals from mainland Europe, such as the surrealists.

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he was arrested, together with other Republican politicians, for his socialist leanings on 18 July 1936 and incarcerated on a prison ship.

On 19 August he was sent, with 36 other people, on the ship Viera y Clavijo to the prison camp at Villa Cisneros, in the Spanish Sahara.

One night, when he was returning to Jaén from a mission in Andújar, his jeep collided with a train carrying wounded soldiers.

These are: Though he was released, he remained under strict vigilance in a state of house arrest (libertad vigilada), and lived in the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, occupying a minor bureaucratic post.