author
Vicente Espinel
d. 1624
A lively figure of Spain’s Golden Age, this poet, novelist, and musician is best remembered for shaping the ten-line stanza later called the espinela. His adventurous life also fed into one of the period’s best-known picaresque stories.
1 Audiobook
Vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón
by Vicente Espinel
About the author
Born in Ronda in 1550 and dying in Madrid on February 4, 1624, Vicente Espinel was a Spanish writer and musician of the Siglo de Oro. He studied at Salamanca and became known not only for his literary work but also for a life that seems to have ranged widely before he settled into church service and musical posts.
Espinel is especially associated with the décima, a ten-line poetic form that later took the name espinela in his honor. He also wrote Diversas rimas and is remembered for La vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón (1618), a picaresque novel that drew on the color and movement of his own experience.
What makes him stand out today is the blend of art forms in his career: he belonged to the world of poetry, fiction, and music at once. That mix gives his work a vivid, lived-in quality and helps explain why he remains a recognizable name in Spanish literary history.