(b ?Cuenca de Campos; d after 1558). Spanish writer. He studied at the universities of Alcalá, Valladolid and Salamanca and became a member of the circle of followers of Erasmus around Emperor Charles V. He visited France, England, Flanders and Italy and, after a stay in Constantinople, travelled through Greece and the Ionic Islands. Among his most interesting books are Siguesa la tragedia de Mirrha (1536), Prouechoso tractado de cambios y contrataciones de mercaderes y reprouacion de usura (1541) and Gramática castellana (1558). His most important work, however, is Ingeniosa comparación entre lo antiguo y lo presente (1539), which is composed in the characteristic Renaissance form of a dialogue. In this Villalón eruditely defended the modernity of his age, his understanding of which was moulded by his knowledge of the Spanish Renaissance—that is, the Plateresque or early Renaissance. Although Villalón praised Classical antiquity, using a broad range of criteria he considered that this had been surpassed in modern times, a period that he judged to have begun with the Gothic and to have continued with the Renaissance. The works that he considered superior to those of the Greeks and Romans were buildings with Gothic or early Renaissance tendencies, such as the Hospital de los Reyes Catolicós (...