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This study examines the effects of lexical stress on vowel quality in Iberian Spanish and Central Catalan and the relationship between phonetic variation caused by stress and speech rate. For Catalan, both absence of stress and fast speech rate result in a shrunken vowel space. For Spanish, the effects of speech rate are in line with those found for Catalan. Yet, unstressed vowels are characterized by lower F1 than their stressed counterparts. Results are discussed in the light of the Hyperarticulation Hypothesis and the Sonority Expansion Hypothesis.