Monfils, the tournament's 2008 runner-up, defeated his Spanish foe 7-5, 6-4, winning 79 percent of service points and hitting seven aces.
If Monfils, a Paris native, wins the Vienna event, he will earn 160 points in his effort to qualify for the season-ending men's singles final at London next month.
Second-seeded Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic downed Portugal's Frederico Gil 6-2, 6-3; fourth-seeded Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany beat Victor Crivoi when the Romanian retired with a right shoulder injury trailing 2-6, 0-3 in the second set, and fifth-seeded Nicolas Almagro of Spain downed American Wayne Odesnik 6-4, 6-4.
Other winners were Austria's Daniel Koellerer, Serbia's Janko Tipsarevic and Slovakia's Dominik Hrbaty.
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