Purificación García was born in a village in the Galician council of Castrelo do Val, in the province of Orense. Although she had an older sister, he died of pneumonia before she was born.

When she was just three years old, her family emigrated to Uruguay, where she lived the rest of her childhood and the first years of her youth. At first, her parents worked on a ranch, her father as a lumberjack, her mother cultivating the farm's orchard. Later, the family settled in Montevideo, where they were porters of a building. After an unsuccessful attempt to study medicine, which she only managed to complete during her first year, she went to work in a knitting company where, starting as an apprentice, she became a designer.