Born into a well-to-do Andalusian family who, like many of the so-called Generation 27, left Spain after the Civil War, initially for Britain where he taught Spanish at Cambridge University, then for the USA, and settling finally in Mexico.

Although he fell in love with a man, at last in 1951, in Mexico , he was generally unhappy in exile and frequently suffered from ill health.

Homoerotism is strikingly obvious in his work, but somehow Spanish literary critics have been reluctant to deal with this aspect of his work. His poetry addresses homosexuality in the form of the object of desire that eludes one, admiration for male youth, and a fascination with the male body.