Felipe Ruiz Martin was born to a wealthy landowning family in Palacios de Campos (Valladolid) in 1915. His first investigations were about diplomatic history. Directed by Ballesteros, his PhD dissertation led with diplomatic relationships between Spain and Poland. His main university professor was Julián María Rubio. Before moving to the university of Bilbao and U. Autónoma in Madrid, he became high school professor in Palencia and Secondary Education´s inspector in Valladolid.

He wrote only a few books since he was always extremely rigorous and demanding of himself. Some were unpublished due to different reasons, such as his famous, El siglo de los Genoveses en Castilla (1528-1627): Capitalismo Cosmopolita y Capitalismos Nacionales -widely used by Braudel in the second edition of his Mediterráneo - and Les aluns espagnols. Indice de la conjoncture économique de l´Europe au XVIe siècle (Fundación Española de Historia Moderna, 2005).

Selected honors, visiting professor at Princeton hosted by John H. Elliott in 1978. History Academician in 1990. Member of the scientific committee of Francesco Datini Institute. Doctor Honoris Causa from the universities of Valladolid and the Basque Country. Premio Nacional de Historia (National History Prize) from the Ministerio de Educación y Cultura (Education and Culture Ministry) in 1991, endowed with a cash prize of 15 million euro for his book Pequeño capitalismo, gran capitalism, Crítica.

Promoter of the AEHE (Spanish Economic History Association) and first President between 1981 and 1993. He died in Madrid on January 27, 2004.

Presentation of the book
Homage to Don Felipe
(May 22, 2009), by R Hernandez
and J Moreno

Another publication by this historian:
Mesta transhumance and wool in modern Spain.
It reports on the Mesta´s Honorable Assembly of shepherds; a medieval institution organized for the transhumance of sheep between north and south of the Iberian Peninsula.
The Mesta was founded in Castile in 1273, by Alfonso X the Wise, from the stock-breeder associations and guilds that existed in the thirteenth century in Aragon and Castile, merging in a single association in Castile. It was a privileged partnership allowed to graze throughout the territory, up to the point that all those who acted against the shepherds could be punished. Also, they were exempt from paying whatever taxes, had their own judges, and the King always supported its decisions. The kings used to favor the nobles of the association in disputes and conflicts with farmers, because sheep often ruined fields during migrations.