Sir Alfred Vasquez QC served for two decades as the territory’s speaker of parliament through the 1970s and into the early ‘90s; he remains the longest-serving holder of that post and was 89 when he died.
The Gibraltar Chronicle reported that former Chief Minister Adolfo Canepa -- who had been in the House of Assembly during Sir Alfred’s time as speaker – said at the memorial service: ‘Inside and outside the House, he always had a positive word of guidance to give you ... He was very fair and impartial, and he made it his business to be impartial to the extent that whenever there was a general election he did not vote. He would leave Gibraltar and not vote, so that government or opposition, no party could ever say he had voted for one or the other.’
Sir Alfred was called to the London bar at Inner Temple and the bar in Gibraltar in 1950. He was a senior partner at local law firm Triay & Triay, following the merger of that practice and his, Vasquez Benady & Co.
The firm was also hit last week by the death of Sir Alfred’s partner JE Triay QC, who died aged 80. Mr Triay was called to London’s Middle Temple in 1952 and to the Gibraltar bar in the same year. Gibraltar-based news web site, Panorama, reports that Mr Triay was also involved in local politics, taking an active role in the Party for the Autonomy of Gibraltar in the 1960s.
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