Batlle was born on May 23, 1856 in Montevideo to Lorenzo Batlle y Grau and Amalia Ordoñez. Batlle’s grandfather, José Batlle y Carreó, had arrived in Montevideo on his own ship with Batlle’s grandmother from Sitjes, a town near Barcelona, and built a flour mill which won a contract to provision the Royal Spanish Navy in Montevideo. Batlle’s grandfather was loyal to the Spanish crown through both the British invasions of the River Plate and the first and second attempts to secure Uruguayan independence from Spain led by José Gervasio Artigas, and subsequently returned to Spain in 1814, and the rest of the Batlle family followed in 1818. Batlle’s grandmother died in Sitjes in 1823, and his grandfather subsequently returned to Montevideo in 1833 to reopen the flour mill. Batlle’s father Lorenzo had been born in Uruguay in 1810, and returned the Montevideo three years before the rest of the family in 1830, after an extensive education in France and Spain. Batlle’s father quickly joined and became prominent within the Colorados, and was involved in the Uruguayan Civil War, notably personally escorting Fructuoso Rivera to exile in Brazil in 1847. Lorenzo Batlle married Batlle’s mother, the daughter of another Colorado guerrilla, during the Uruguayan Civil War.