Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza (Taxco, New Spain - Madrid, 1639), the American dramatist of the Spanish stage

The one first-rank dramatist of the Golden Age born in the Americas, printed in Madrid in 1628 and Barcelona in 1634 while he held office as relator of the Council of the Indies. His nineteenth-century editor calls him "the distinguished American writer", quotes the verse in which he put the drainage works of the valley of Mexico on a Madrid stage, prints the lampoons on his crooked back, and doubts in the same volume whether he ever saw Mexico.