Castrortega moved to Madrid from his hometown to study Fine Arts and pursue a career as an artist. In 1985 thanks to an initiative from the Spanish-American Joint Committee he obtained a scholarship to travel to New York. In his early practice he worked with areas of flat colours—mainly greys, blues and blacks—on which he superimposed fortuitous, feral shapes and figures. He later focused on urban subject matters, executed with thick layers of matter. From there he shifted his practice towards more abstract large-format works with signs and symbols such as fish, ellipses, lines and more expressive areas of colour. Castrortega is also the author of books like Pétalos para el fuego, 1993; Frambuesa y el erotismo, 2003; and Don Quijote traicionado, 2004, with which he obtained the prize for Best Graphic Art at the Estampa art fair.