Magdalena Natalia Gorrell Guimaraens, daughter of an American Foreign Service Officer and a Spanish mother, was born in Quito, Ecuador. In 1963 she moved with her parents to Porto, Portugal, where she met and married her husband, Bruce Duncan Guimaraens, a British Port Wine Shipper. Widowed in 2002, Magdalena has four children, five grandchildren and one step-great grandson. Following his retirement in 1997, Bruce and Magdalena moved to Vila Nova de Cerveira in the far North of Portugal, where she still lives today. Magdalena was graduated Magna Cum Laude by the University of Maryland University College where she majored in Humanities and History. She also attended post-graduate courses at the University of Cordoba, Spain. Magdalena is a member of Phi Alpha Theta, the National History Honor Society and of the Anglo-Portuguese Historical Society. Fluent in four languages: English, French, Portuguese and Spanish, in 1975, she became an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, then Director, at the American Language Institute in Porto. At the same time as she dedicated herself to translating scientific research (medicine and viticulture) and history books from Portuguese into English, she began her career as an International Conference Interpreter, a member of AIIC, the association founded by the interpreters at the Nuremberg Trials. Retired as an active conference interpreter in 2015, Magdalena has since dedicated herself to translating and publishing Francisco Moreno Gómez, a noted Spanish historian's research into the Franco Revolution. She has also published several books in English and Spanish, the latter jointly with her sisters Cristina and Angela, for which they use the Spanish surname format as their pen names: Gorrell Jaén.