- First name
- Miguel Pérez
- Last name
- Maltranilla, de
- Date of Birth
- [1625]
- Date of Death
- > 1659
- Born in
- Ameyugo
- Died in
- -
Miguel Pérez de Maltranila served as a soldier in Flanders. See: ibid., pp. 32 and 66, Annex 2. Pérez de Maltranilla accompagnied one captain Marcos de Avellaneda from Bruges to The Hague in late September 1658. In November of the same year, he settled temporarily in Amsterdam.
Spinoza made the acquaintance of two Spanish travellers, Augustine friar Tomás Solano y Robles (late 1658 or early 1659) and infantry captain Miguel Pérez de Maltranilla (between November 1658 and mid-January 1659), who would later testify on oath before the Inquisition tribunal in Madrid (early August 1659) about their time in Amsterdam. On 9 august 1659, he declaired:
He said that in Amsterdam in the same period until 14 January of the same year, the date on which he left the city, he knew dr Reynoso, a physician, born in Sevilla, and a certain Spinoza, of whom he does not know where he came from, and dr Prado, also a physician, a certain Pacheco, of whom he has heard that he is from Sevilla, a confectioner, who is in the business of chocolate and tobacco. They all visited the house of mr. Joseph Guerra, a knight from the Canary Islands, who lives in Amsterdam to have his leprosy treated, whom he frequented on a regularly basis as his friend and correspondent. On the occasions that he saw them over a period of two months, during which he saw them numerous times, because they visited that house to take care of the said mr. Joseph Guerra and for social reasons, he respectively heard that both dr Reynoso and Pacheco were Jews, who obeyed the Law, and when they were offered lard they refused. About the said dr Prado and Spinoza he has often heard that they originally were Jews and used to obey the Law, but later denounced it because they had the opinion that the Law was no good and false, and this was the reason that they were excommunicated, that they were looking for the best law to obey, and it seems to him that were obeying none.
Revah, 1959, pp. 32–3, 67, Annex 2.
Pérez de Maltranilla in his sworn testimony of August 9 also provides a physical description of Spinoza:
Spinoza is a young man with a fine body, slim, black hair, a moustache of the same colour and a good face. He is aged 32, when asked he declares that he only knows that Spinoza said to him that he never visited Spain, but longs to see it.
Revah, 1959, pp. 33 and 68, Annex 2.