Manuel Corte-Real

Manuel Henrique de Melo e Castro de Mendonça Corte-Real (born 29 October 1940) is a Portuguese diplomat and historian.

Biography Manuel Corte-Real was born on 29 October 1940, in Lapa, Lisbon. He earned a licentiate degree in History from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon, where he taught as a lecturer (assistente) from 1966 to 1970.

He began his diplomatic career in September 1969, when he became an attaché; he became a Third Secretary in 1972 and was posted to the Portuguese embassy in Bonn in October 1973. He was promoted to Second Secretary in 1974 and to First Secretary in 1976; in February 1977, he was posted to the Portuguese embassy in Brasília. In 1990, he was appointed Consul-General in Seville. When Diogo Freitas do Amaral was President of the United Nations General Assembly in 1995–1996, Corte-Real joined him, on secondment, again as his chief of staff. he returned to Portugal in 2005 and once again served as Chief of Protocol, until 2008.

More recently, Corte-Real has led the "Missão para o Património" working group of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the goal of studying and publishing the cultural heritage of the Necessidades Palace.

Published works A feitoria Portuguesa na Andaluzia 1500–1532 (Instituto de Alta Cultura, Ed. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 1967) Feitores e escrivães da feitoria Portuguesa na Andaluzia ("Separata da Revista do Tempo e da História", III, Centro de Estudos Históricos da Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, 1968) O Palácio das Necessidades (Ed. Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Lisbon, 1981) — recipient of the Júlio de Castilho Prize in 1983