Gaspar de Quiroga y Vela

He was sent by King Philip II as an envoy to Rome and to the Spanish-administered territories in the Italian peninsula.

He served as a member of the Spanish High Council of Justice since 1563 and as Bishop of Cuenca, (1561–1577), being then promoted to Archbishop of Toledo, to replace Bartolomé de Carranza who had been under arrest in Spain and Rome for the last 17 years, charged with heresy.

that Quiroga portrait is found in the face of Saint Augustine in the famous Greco painting The Burial of the Count of Orgaz.

Quiroga liberated from the Inquisition's prisons the mystical poet Fray Luis de León (1527 - 1591), who had been imprisoned for over 4 years at Valladolid, from March 1572 until December 1576, for publishing, amongst other things, a Spanish translation of the Song of Solomon, both of his parents having Jewish ancestry albeit being himself an Augustinian friar expert in Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

Around 1584, Quiroga built at the other side of the River Tagus, in the area known as the "Cigarrales", a summer house now occupied by a hotel.