Spanish doctor and socialist politician, last constitutional mayor of Granada during the 2nd Republic. He was shot by the rebels at the beginning of the Civil War. In the 1920s, he participated in the El Rinconcillo tertulia with his brother José Fernández-Montesinos and Federico García Lorca, among many other artists and intellectuals of Granada at the time. In 1930, he married Concha García Lorca. Three children were born of the marriage: Vicenta (Tica, who was born in Granada in 1930), Manuel (Granada, 1932 – Madrid, 2013) and Concha (Granada, 1936 – Madrid, 2015), who never got to know her father or uncle.
On July 1, 1936 he was appointed mayor of Granada. On the 20th, he was removed at gunpoint by the military coup plotters. He was detained until August 16, when he was shot at the walls of the Granada cemetery. That same afternoon Federico was arrested at the Rosales house.
He was the son of a senior employee of the Rodriguez-Acosta Bank in Granada. He studied medicine, obtaining his degree in 1921 and setting up his practice at Plaza de Las Descalzas, 14. In 1915, together with his brother José, he was administrator of the magazine Andalucía: revista semanal (only two issues were published, stored nowadays in the Federico García Lorca Foundation archives). He started in politics in the Autonomous Republican Party of Granada, founded after the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, in 1930. In 1933, Fernández-Montesinos opposed Granada being part of the assembly that was to approve the Statute of Autonomy of Andalusia promoted by Blas infante.
In early 1931, he joined the Socialist Party. He was a councilman in the City Council of Granada from 1931 to 1934. After the events of October 1934, the municipal corporation of Granada, of which he was part, was replaced by a manager by order of the catholic conservative party CEDA. He regained his seat in the municipal elections of 1936, which opened the door to the advent of the Second Republic. On July 1, he was appointed mayor of Granada, but a few days later, on the 20th, at a quarter to seven in the evening, during a meeting with other councilors in the City Hall hall, Colonel Miguel del Campo burst in, armed with a pistol, and dismissed him in the name of the military coup plotters. He remained detained until August 16 when he was shot at the walls of the Granada cemetery. In the afternoon of the same day Federico García Lorca was arrested in the family home of the poet Luis Rosales.
