The stirring home effort went a long way to soothe fans after the shock semi-final exit of top seed Roger Federer at the hands of Montanes 24 hours earlier.

Gil, ranked 133, will rise to around 104 in the world after his major and all but unexpected effort.

Montanes, ranked 34th, looked to have the match sewn up in little more than an hour, but Gil had other plans.

The outsider rallied from a deficit in the second set and took it into a winning tie brekaer to bring on a third set.

Gil also held a lead but lost it as Montanes fought to level 4-4, then broken the final game to ease to the victory after two and a half hours of battle.

"It's great to win the trophy again, especially after beating Federer here," said the winner.

"It was a real battle between us and I'm just glad I was able to come through, it feels great and gives me more confidence going into the French Open."

Fourth seed Montanes won the fourth trophy of his career.

The Spaniard, who benefited from a bye into the second round, had played for less than three hours in his previous three matches this week while Gil had one match more and a total time of more than eight and a half hours on the clay.

On Saturday, Montanes had handed Federer a stunning straight-set loss in their semi-final and was able to carry his momentum through for his tenth win in a row at Estoril.

Montanes became the first man to defend a title here since Austrian Thomas Muster in 1995-1996.

Gil kept pace with Montanes in the first few games before the Spaniard broke it open with four consecutive winning games to claim the first set in 33 minutes.

Montanes went up an early break in the second on the way to his win. Montanes never faced a break point early on, but Gil showed his courage as he saved a pair of match points in the penultimate game and showed he would not roll over.

Montanes, who beat American James Blake in the 2009 final, was playing Estoril for the sixth time. Estoril was his 12th ATP event of the year and by far his best performance after a pair of semi-finals in Auckland and Buenos Aires.