Francisco Rico is a philologist and historian of literature from the Middle Ages to the Golden Age and emeritus professor of Medieval Hispanic Literature at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He has worked, in particular, on Petrarch and early humanism in Italy and Spain, Lazarillo de Tormes and Don Quixote. He is the founder and director of the “Biblioteca Clásica” collection of the Royal Spanish Academy, which includes, among its 111 titles, the complete works of Miguel de Cervantes. In 2013 he received the Alfonso Reyes Prize at the Colegio de México and in 2015 he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts. In 2016 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bologna and received the De Sanctis Prize in Rome for I venerdì del Petrarca, an essay dedicated to the Italian poet and humanist. His latest books are Lesson and Legacy of Elio Antonio de Nebrija, A Long Loyalty. Philologists and Related Subjects and The First Century of Spanish Literature.