Diego de Torres Villarroel (1693 – 19 June 1770) was a Spanish writer, poet, dramatist, doctor, mathematician, priest and professor of the University of Salamanca.

His most famous work is his autobiography, Vida, ascendencia, nacimiento, crianza y aventuras del Doctor Don Diego de Torres Villarroel (first published 1743).

Villarroel was in such disgrace with the college authorities that he decided to flee to Portugal where he led an adventurous life in which he was successively a hermit, a dancing-master, an alchemist, a mathematician, a soldier, a bullfighter, a student of medicine and an astrologer.

Back in Madrid, he became so poor that he decided to take up smuggling to make money but he was saved by the patronage of the Countess of Arcos, whose house he had tried to rid of a poltergeist.

From then on he dedicated his time to his post at the university, to writing various works and paying frequent visits to Madrid, where he made the acquaintance of the Duchess of Alba.

But I also knew that I was in the land of the blind, for Spain lay in the grip of a darkness so fearsome that in no school, college or university in any one of its cities was there an individual capable of lighting a lamp whereby one might seek out the elements of these sciences.

He wrote Los desdichados del mundo y la gloria (1737), He also wrote poems and plays, but his most important work is his picaresque account of his own life entitled Vida, ascendencia, nacimiento, crianza y aventuras del doctor don Diego de Torres Villarroel, (1743, with further additions later), divided into six chapters, each dealing with a decade of his life.