Galois actions on Q-curves and winding quotients

We prove two ``large images' results for the Galois representations attached to a degree d Q-curve E over a quadratic field K: if K is arbitrary, we prove maximality of the image for every prime p>13 not dividing d, provided that d is divisible by q (but d≠q) with q=2 or 3 or 5 or 7 or 13. If K is real we prove maximality of the image for every odd prime p not dividing d D, where D= disc(K), provided that E is a semistable Q-curve. In both cases we make the (standard) assumptions that E does not have potentially good reduction at all primes p∤6 and that d is square free. The first author is supported by BFM2003-06092.