I carried out my studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where I completed my doctorate in the year of 1990. Subsequently I have enjoyed stays as guest researcher and lecturer in various foreign research centres, such as the University of Cambridge, the Instituto Universitario Europeo in Florence and the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. At this time, I am working on the figure of Eleanor Alvarez of Toledo, Duchess of Tuscany, and the cultural transfers between Florence and Spain during the central years of the sixteenth century.