José María "Txema" Portillo Valdés (born on 1961 in Bilbao) is a Spanish historian, professor of Contemporary History at the University of the Basque Country.

[1] He earned a PhD in History from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), reading a dissertation in 1990 titled Monarquía y Gobierno Provincial.

Poder y Constitución en las provincias exentas, 1760-1808 and supervised by Pablo Fernández Albaladejo [es].

A lecturer at the UPV/EHU since 1988, he was subject to harassment and threats coming from ETA, as well as an attempted attack at the Vitoria Campus where he worked, wherein an incendiary artifact was put in his car in October 1999.

[3][4] He was appointed Chair in Contemporary History at the UPV/EHU in 2017.