She is Director of the Escuela de Estudios Árabes at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spanish National Research Council; CSIC) at Granada, Andalucía.
Penelas was awarded a PhD in Philology in 1998 from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Her thesis was entitled Kitab Hurusiyus: traducción árabe de las "Historiae adversus paganos" de Orosio (The Arabic Translation of the Histories of Orosius, Editing and Study).It was published in 2001 as a monograph.
Penelas studied Arabic philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, before moving to Granada and then London for a postdoctoral fellowship.
She returned to the School of Arabic Studies at Granada, and has been Director of the Escuela de Estudios Árabes at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas since 2017.