Born in Bilbao in 1923, Ramiro Pinilla studied navigation and industrial craftsmanship. Pinilla largely remains outside regular publishing circles, despite the wide acceptance of his work among the reading public and critics. His most acclaimed works are his stories and novels set in the town of Getxo in the Basque country. His most ambitious work, Green Valleys, Red Hills, is a three-volume historical trilogy of the Basque country. The first volume of the trilogy, The Turbulent Land, received the Euskadi Prize in 2005. In 2006, Pinilla was awarded the Premio Nacional de Narrativa. Pinilla died in 2015.