Werner Thomas is professor of Iberian and Iberoamerican History at the University of Leuven. He has published extensively on the repression of Protestantism in Spain (1517–1648), the Habsburg court of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella Clara Eugenia in Brussels (1598–1621), the Siege of Ostend (1601–1604), and the political and cultural relations between the (Southern) Netherlands and the Spanish empire (1500–1700). He is the autor of Los protestantes y la Inquisición en España en tiempos de Reforma y Contrarreforma (2001).