Tourism appoints three senior officials to evaluate the future Managing Director

The Tourism Board of the Autonomous City of Melilla has appointed the three members of the advisory body that will evaluate the applicants and formulate the reasoned proposal of candidates to the Governing Board for the position of Managing Director. The decision was adopted by the Presidency of the organization on September 29, 2026, and is published in the Official Gazette of the Autonomous City of Melilla (BOME) number 6427, dated October 30, 2026, with the official reference BOME-A-2026-1215 on page 5334. The body is composed of three public employees from group A1.

The three members of the advisory body

The resolution nominally identifies the components of the collegiate body, all of whom hold managerial or technical positions within the City Administration:

• Ms. Ester Azancot Cánovas, Director General of Economic Activation.
• Mr. Diego Giner Gutiérrez, Secretary General of the Assembly.
• Ms. Francisca Torres Belmonte, Technical Secretary of Development.

The text is based on article 60.5 of the Government and Administration Regulations of the Autonomous City of Melilla (Extraordinary BOME No. 2, dated January 30, 2017) and article 20.2 of the current Statutes of the Tourism Board. The document was signed in Melilla on October 29, 2026, by Diego Giner Gutiérrez as Acting Secretary General of the Assembly, by Decree No. 23, dated February 13, 2025 (Extra BOME No. 9, dated February 14, 2025).

From the technical report to the provisional list of applicants

The file began on September 29, 2026, when the Presidency agreed to initiate the procedure to fill the Managing Director position, registered under number 31814/2026. On that same day, the Directorate General of Tourism issued a favorable technical report for the filling of the vacancy, and on September 30, the Presidency issued Resolution No. 2026000293, which approved the call for applications and was published in BOME number 6419, dated October 2, 2026.

The rules established in that call assign the advisory body the task of evaluating the applicants and submitting a reasoned proposal to the Governing Board including, “if possible,” three candidates, based on the principles of merit and capacity and criteria of suitability and professional competence. The Governing Board then submits its appointment proposal to the Presidency, in accordance with article 16 of the Statutes.

The process already has filtered candidates: Resolution No. 34, of October 21, 2026, registered under number 2026000034, published in BOME number 6425, of October 23, 2026, provisionally admitted five applicants —Daniel Galán Fernández, Luís Jiménez Antolín, Rocío Martínez Díaz, Marcos Roberto Pérez González, and Fernando Ríos Ortiz— and excluded Ángela Ríos Vicente for submitting the application after the deadline. That resolution opened a correction period of ten business days.

A vacancy since September

The filling of the position responds to the resignation of Mr. Javier Mateos de Porras as Managing Director of the Tourism Board, accepted by Resolution No. 0285, of September 7, 2026, with cessation effective September 4 and the declaration of the vacancy of the Management-Directorate office from that date. Since then, the vacancy has been filled by Mr. Juan Mario González Rojas, who is also Managing Director of the Melilla Monumental Foundation and holds the position of Acting Secretary General of the Assembly.

The resolution published now is final in the administrative route, according to its own text: an optional appeal for reversal may be filed before the same body within one month, or a direct challenge may be brought before the contentious-administrative jurisdictional order, pursuant to Article 123 of Law 39/2015, of October 1, on the Common Administrative Procedure of Public Administrations. The document is notified “for its publication” and is not accompanied, in the bulletin, by an interview calendar or a meeting date for the advisory body.

Why it matters

The Managing Directorate of the Tourism Board assumes the execution of the agreements of the Governing Board, the direction of services and personnel management, the preparation of annual action programs, and the processing of classification files for tourist establishments, in addition to attending the Governing Board with a voice but without a vote. The fact that the previous screening remains in the hands of three A1 group officials —from Economic Activation, the Assembly, and Promotion— makes this body the first real filter for an appointment that decides local tourism policy at a time of boosting package bonus programs and city promotion.

Source: Official Bulletin of the Autonomous City of Melilla, No. 6427, of October 30, 2026, section I, page 5334 (official reference: BOME-A-2026-1215).