Historian, academic and chairman of the Spanish Institute, Miguel Artola was born in San Sebastián, Guipúzcoa, Spain, on the 12th July 1923. He is married and has four children.

A Doctor in Philosophy and Letters from the Complutense University of Madrid, he obtained the chair of Spanish History at the University of Salamanca in 1960, where he stayed until 1969, when he moved on to hold the same chair at the Autonomous University of Madrid.

Later, during 1975 and 1976, he was secretary of the Department of History of the Juan March Foundation, and a member of the institution´s advisory committee from 1977 to 1978. He also co-operated with the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).

On the 20th March 1981 he was elected a member of the Royal Historical Academy. His admission lecture, read on the 2nd May 1982, discussed "Declarations and Rights of Man."

As a researcher he has specialised in the study of the liberal revolution and the origins of contemporary Spain, a subject to which he has dedicated several books, among which is Volume XXVI of the Historia de España, directed by Menéndez Pidal, "La España de Fernando VII", in 1969. He has also published Los afrancesados, Antiguo Régimen y revolución liberal, Los ferrocarriles en España, 1844-1943, Historia de la Hacienda española en el Antiguo Régimen, La burguesía revolucionaria, 1808-1869 and Partidos y programas políticos (1808-1936), a work written with the help of Manuel Aguilar, La economía española al final del Antiguo Regimen, La Hacienda del siglo XIX, El latifundio, propiedad y explotación, Los orígenes de la España contemporánea and Textos fundamentales para la historia. In May 1988 the first three volumes of the Enciclopedia de la Historia de España, which he has directed, saw the light. His book, Los afrancesados, was republished in April 1990.

From September 1986 he has been the chairman of the Spanish Institute. Furthermore, he is Emeritus Professor of Contemporary History at the Autonomous University of Madrid.

He is currently preparing the script of a video to commemorate the bi-centenary of Carlos III.

Among his more recent activities, the closing lecture he gave in 1988 on "Basque Society in the 18th Century and its Impact on America", on the occasion of a conference of "The Basques and America" organised by the Banco de Vizcaya, was outstanding. Likewise, in the same year, he gave the opening lecture, on the army of the Bourbons, at the summer school organised by the Complutense University at San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

Since 1989 he has formed part of the commission of technical advisers from among the university teachers, which met for the first time with the minister of Education and Science, Javier Solano, in October of that year.