[2] Pilar del Río was born in Castril (Granada) in 1950, to Antonio and Carmen, the eldest of fifteen children.

[3] In 1986, del Río met the Portuguese writer José Saramago after she read all his books translated to Spanish.

[4] They got married two years later, in 1988, and decided to live in Lisbon, moving afterwards in 1993 to Lanzarote, one of the Spanish Canary Islands.

[5] Pilar del Río is president of the José Saramago Foundation.

On May 26, 2017 she was awarded the Luso-Spanish Arts and Culture Prize at the National Library of Spain.