Due to the existence of different families with the same surname, his affiliation has been debated for centuries:[2] Gil Polo, in the final stanzas of the "Canto del Turia ”(1564), mentions an Aldana among the Valencian poets of his time,[3] personality that Gregorio Mayans (later followed by Vicente Ximeno) identifies with the poet, and assumes he was of Valencian origin.

[5] Finally, Elias L. Rivers, based on documents then unpublished, determined that he was most likely born in the kingdom of Naples, [6] and son of the military man Antonio de Aldana, and therefore originally from Extremadura, thesis recently confirmed by Nievas Rojas.

[7] He spent his youth in Florence, devoted to the study of classical languages and the authors of antiquity, of whom he became a good connoisseur.

Also important are a Fable of Phaeton in hendecasyllables, the very original Song of Christ crucified and the extraordinary Epistle to Arias Montano on the contemplation of God and the requirements of it (1577), in chained tercets, of Neoplatonic inspiration, which has happened in all anthologies of poetry in Spanish as a classic work by content and style: Admired by Francisco de Quevedo, who tried to publish his works in the 16th century to combat the culteranism, Cervantes mentions him at the side of Boscán and Garcilaso, and in the 20th century was adored by the poets of Generation of 1927 like Luis Cernuda .

He fought as a captain in the Battle of St. Quentin and, as a general of artillery, in the Tercios of Flanders in the service of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, the Duke of Alba, During the Siege of Haarlem he was wounded in one foot by an arquebus shot.