The Diplomat
The diplomat Julio Montesino, who for nearly nine years was the special delegate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Campo de Gibraltar, died yesterday, after a long illness, in Toronto (Canada), where he was currently consul general of Spain.
From his office in Algeciras, Montesino was between October 2008 and the summer of 2017, the person who acted as the Government’s ‘antenna’ for matters related to Gibraltar. In fact, with his arrival, the Executive recovered the figure of special delegate for the Campo de Gibraltar, which had been vacant for a couple of decades.
Montesino was appointed to the post in 2008 by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, and one of his first tasks was to follow up on the agreements reached in Córdoba two years earlier by the Tripartite Forum on Gibraltar.
When the PP returned to power at the end of 2011, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel García Margallo, kept Montesino in the post, from which he experienced some very tense moments due to the queues suffered by Gibraltarians to cross the border as a result of the tightening of customs controls.
Throughout his stay as special delegate for the Campo de Gibraltar, Julio Montesino, showed great professionalism, which was valued by the authorities of the Rock.
Yesterday, the mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce, described him as “a great professional and excellent person” and the mayor of San Roque, Juan Carlos Ruiz Boix, said of him that he was “a magnificent person dedicated to his work”.
In August 2017, Montesino joined the post of consul general in Pau (France) and, five years later, in August 2022, he began his work as consul general in the Canadian city of Toronto.
Julio Montesino was born in Cádiz in 1958 and entered the diplomatic service in 1985. Before his appointment as delegate in Campo de Gibraltar, he was consul general in Houston, was posted twice in Mexico, was deputy consul general in Buenos Aires and counsellor at the Permanent Representation of Spain to the UN in New York. He also worked in the Ministry’s International Legal Department.
