Manuel Altolaguirre Bolín was born on June 29, 1905 on Strachan St., in Malaga. His father- the district judge and a playwright Manuel Álvarez Altolaguirre- died when the future poet was only five, leaving his family in dire straits. His mother, Concepción Bolín Gómez de Cádiz, was the judge’s second wife and gave him five sons: Luis, Manuel, Concha, Carlos, and María Emilia. Her husband had two sons, Federico and Mariano, from his first marriage.

He learned the rudiments of reading and writing in the Holy Family School, in Malaga.  He studied secondary education in the Jesuit school, in Miraflores de El Palo, and then Altolaguirre enrolled as a (libre) “free” student at the Law School of the University of Granada.
In that city, he met Manuel de Falla and renewed his friendship with Federico García Lorca, whom he had met years before in Malaga.
In 1923, Altolaguirre, Souvirón, and José María Hinojosa, a young poet from Malaga, founded the literary journal Ambos. Its four issues included works by Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Ramón Gómez de la Serna. Altolaguirre also took care of the edition of Gárgola, Souvirón’s first poetry book and the first title in Altolaguirre's long career as a printer and publisher.