Francisco Fernandez Ordonez; Led Spain Into EC

Francisco Fernandez Ordonez, the former foreign minister who helped guide Spain’s integration into the European Community, died Friday. He was 62.

Fernandez Ordonez died at his home in Madrid after a long illness, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Eduardo Aznar. News reports cited family doctor Carlos Sanz as saying Fernandez Ordonez went into a coma Thursday.

Fernandez Ordonez asked to be relieved of his post as foreign minister in June because of failing health. He had liver cancer and gallbladder problems.

Until his resignation, Fernandez Ordonez was known as the untiring workhorse of the Socialist government of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez. Fernandez Ordonez became foreign minister in 1985, three years after the Socialists took office.

One of the most popular and respected figures in the Gonzalez government, Fernandez Ordonez was replaced on June 26 by Javier Solana Madariaga.

Even as his health failed him in recent years, Fernandez Ordonez continued a busy schedule shuttling from capital to capital in a campaign to bring Spain to the forefront of European and world politics. Spain joined the European Community in January, 1986.

A tax lawyer by training, he was an outspoken advocate of EC unity.

“If what we want is a sweet decadence, examining our own smallest problems from region to region, from locality to locality, from bell tower to bell tower, then we’re lost,” he said.

Born June 22, 1930, Fernandez Ordonez was a graduate of the University of Madrid. He began his career as a tax inspector, moving to the Ministry of Finance in 1969. He represented Spain at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade talks, as well as before the International Monetary Fund.

He joined the democratic opposition to dictator Francisco Franco and, after Franco’s death in 1975, participated in talks aimed at restoring democracy.

Fernandez Ordonez is survived by his wife, Maria Paz Garcia Mayo.