Carmen Martín Gaite was born in Salamanca on 8 December 1925, ‘a las doce de la mañana de un día frío y soleado’ (at midday on a cold, sunny day). She spent many of her summers in Galicia, in the village of San Lorenzo de Piñor where her mother was from, and her writing references both Salamanca and Galicia, the former most obviously in Entre visillos (Behind the Curtains), while the latter is the setting for Las ataduras (Binding Ties), Retahílas (Yarns) and El pastel del diablo (The Devil's Cake). Galicia is also present elsewhere, Martín Gaite claimed, in the acceptance of the mysterious in her work and her ‘forma de entender y navegar la vida’ (way of understanding and navigating life), which she credits to her Galician roots. The daughter of parents ‘de una calidad humana excepcional’ (‘Bosquejo’, 11) (of exceptional human qualities), she was brought up in a liberal, well-to-do family context; well-known writer Miguel de Unamuno was a family friend. The civil war and later Francoist regime had an impact on Martín Gaite's life, and much of her early writing is an engagement with, and a criticism of, the injustices that she saw in post-war society.

As young girls, Carmen Martín Gaite and her sister Ana were educated at home, with a series of private tutors, but the author credits her father with influencing her towards art, history and literature. Rather than a convent school, Carmen Martín Gaite attended the Instituto Femenino de Salamanca, the model for the ‘caserón destartalado y frío’ (‘Bosquejo’, 15) (large, rundown, cold building) that Natalia attends in Entre visillos. In 1943, she began studying for a degree in Filología Románica at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Salamanca.