The figure of Don Vasco de Quiroga, together with the work he completed in New Spain, has for some time been the focus of historians’, philosophers’ and jurists’ attention. Since the pioneering research by Juan José Moreno and Nicolás León, followed by Silvio Zavala, Justino Fernández, Edmundo O'Gorman and more recently excellent studies by J. B. Warren, Carlos Herrejón and Alberto Carrillo, Don Vasco has been the subject of a prolific bibliography, which is still being added to. Fifty years ago Alfonso Trueba remarked on the number of works of quality on Vasco de Quiroga, pointing out that ‘adding one more to those already published without offering anything new would be a pointless task’. Nonetheless he himself took the risk of publishing a little biographical essay ‘imagining that it would be not only useful but necessary to introduce the history of such an eminent personage in our cultural landscape’. I in my turn am daring to present a few thoughts on this illustrious first bishop of Michoacán, following the advice of Alberto Carrillo, for whom ‘retrieving a more authentic image of the person and work of that great founder of the new Michoacán and the Indian church in the province may be a step forward in the duty to consolidate the national collective memory and reconstruct our spiritual history’.