He served as Philip II of Spain's ambassador to Elizabeth I of England from 1568 to 1571 during one of the tensest moments in Anglo-Spanish relations and was expelled after being accused of complicity of the Ridolfi plot.
He also appeared as a character in the 2007 film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, played by the British actor Will Houston.
Due to his hostility to the English, Espés described William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, one of the most powerful and influential noblemen in England at that time, to Philip II as a common man, although very clever, false, lying, a great heretic and foolish enough to believe that not all the princes of Christendom combined were in a position to violate his country's sovereignty.In the Spanish Netherlands the Geuzens' Revolt began and in November 1568 the royal treasury in Seville sent five ships with 40,000 pounds of gold, with which Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba was to raise troops in the Netherlands to quell the revolt.
[1] On Espés's advice, Alva then seized the goods of English merchant ships anchored at Antwerp.
[2] In a letter dated 14 February 1569 Espés wrote that John Hawkins had founded a colony in Florida in lieu of that lost at San Juan de Ulúa.