Castelao spent his childhood and adolescence in Santa Rosa de Toay, Argentina. In 1900, the Castelao family returned to Rianxo. In 1908, he obtained his degree in Medicine from the University of Santiago de Compostela. The next year, he passed his doctorate in Madrid, where he started to become known as a caricaturist, and settled down in Rianxo, joining the political movement Action Galicia ("Acción Gallega" in Spanish). As a caricaturist, Castelao focussed on the everyday in a humorous way, although after the cruelty and tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, he turned to using his art to denounce the misery of Fascism.