Professor of Chemistry at the University of Granada, mayor and councilman of the municipal corporation of Granada after the proclamation of the Second Republic. He was an active enthusiast of the new regime and was linked to the intellectual groups of the Silver Age. His relationship with García Lorca was artistic at the beginning and tragic at the end. In 1929, at the Hotel Alhambra Palace he attended the tribute paid by the city to García Lorca and the actress Margarita Xirgu on the occasion of the premiere of Mariana Pineda at the Cervantes Theater; in 1936, he was arrested by the rebels and forced to cooperate as a gravedigger in La Colonia in Víznar, a summer recreation building where the condemned, including Federico himself, spent their last hours.
His popularity and appreciation in Granada’s university classrooms grew and, following the spirit of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, he organized different study trips with his students. His presence in the tribute to Federico García Lorca in 1929 is a declaration of his sympathies.
Yoldi began his teaching activity as a professor of General Chemistry in Zaragoza. In 1918, he moved to the University of Seville where he obtained the chair of his specialty. Six years later he requested a transfer to Granada, where he became a professor. His popularity and appreciation in the university classrooms of Granada grew and, following the spirit of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (Free Teaching Institution), he organized different study trips with his students. His presence in the tribute to Federico García Lorca in 1929 is a declaration of his sympathies. In a famous photo taken after the premiere, he appears with many of the members of pre-war cultural Granada: Manuel de Falla, Fernando de los Ríos, Antonio García Valdecasas, Julia Pacello, Manuel Fernández-Montesinos, Federico García Lorca, Hermenegildo Lanz and José Val del Omar, among others.
Yoldi was no stranger to the new freedoms brought about by the Republic. In April 1932, he was elected interim mayor of Granada, a position he held until September 30 of the same year. In 1934, he joined the Izquierda Republicana, the party of Azaña, and from the university he defended his political convictions. Yoldi is one of the eight cloister members who in 1936 supports the motion of censure against the dean Antonio Marín Ocete accused of deploying repressive measures after the victory of the Popular Front. The deposed dean is replaced by Salvador Vila who, a few months later, in October 1936, was assassinated by the rebels. After the consolidation of July 18 and the subsequent repression, Marín Ocete returns to the deanship in November 1936.
Yoldi is arrested after the coup against the Republic and together with other professors, such as Joaquín García Labella, transferred to the front of Víznar where he is forced to join the group of gravediggers of La Colonia. Yoldi and his companions have to dig the graves of those condemned to death, among them, in August 1936, that of his friend Federico García Lorca.
On October 23, 1936, he was shot without trial in the cemetery of Granada, along with four of the cloistered members who supported the dismissal of Marín Ocete.
