He was a danseur étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet and artistic director of the Spanish National Dance Company.
In 1987, he won a scholarship from Prix de Lausanne[2] and entered the Paris Opera Ballet School.
In 1992, he was awarded the Gold medal of the Varna International Ballet Competition and in 1999, he received the Premio Nacional de Danza.
He danced the major classical ballets such as Swan Lake, Giselle, Don Quixote, La Bayadère, The Sleeping Beauty, Raymonda, Paquita, The Nutcracker, La Sylphide, Romeo and Juliet, as well as neoclassical ballets by Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Kenneth MacMillan, Yury Grigorovich, Antony Tudor, Serge Lifar, Harald Lander, and John Cranko.
Martínez also danced contemporary pieces by Maurice Béjart, John Neumeier, Mats Ek, William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Martha Graham, Roland Petit, and Pina Bausch.