20th century Spanish Makers

Spain has a long history of chordophone manufacture and as the home of the "Spanish Guitar" there were plenty of luthiers and factories plying their trade, and with a lot of European distributors included Spanish instruments as part of the catalogue, (for example Beare & Sons 1932 catalogue lists 4 Spanish made Ukuleles, but no information beyond they are Spanish), they are often found around Europe and the former Spanish empire. The high point for Spanish Ukulele manufacture was around 1925 to 35, with the Spanish Civil War of 1936 and WWII, (and Franco's Fascist dictatorship thereafter), putting a major break on manufacture and export.

A lot of the Spanish Ukuleles look more like Guitarricos, (and may well have originally been built as such), with golpeadors and saddleless bridges, but the problem is there is now, not a lot of information on them like the size of the workshop or the quantity or quality of manufacture? Sometimes they have a paper label inside the sound hole giving the name and address, (or city), of the maker, but not always, and even when they do there is often not much information beyond that to be found. The problems of finding the maker is made worse by Telesforo Julve making up names and other information on the labels of ukuleles he branded!

Here are makers I have seen photos of but have very little information.

José Benedid

Information on the maker of the Ukulele like instrument I have seen with a sound hole label is tricky and largely speculative, (it doesn't help that the photos are very small). The obvious information from the label is it was made in Cadiz by José Benedid it even give the exact address, 85 St. Augustin Street. A little research shows there was an internationally renowned and important Guitar luthier at this address, Josef Benedid. It also show he had a son called José who was also an internationally renowned and important Guitar luthier; job done! Not quite, Josef died in 1836 and José famously emigrated to Cuba with all of his important work coming from there. My suspicion is, as Josef had 9 children, two others went on to be slightly less important but still noteworthy Guitar luthiers, (one of whom died childless but the other, Mateo had children and one of them was called José - but I don't know this José's occupation), that this is probably the work of one of Josef's grandchildren or even great grandchildren, (Yes it could be a very old Guitarico but Cadiz is the other side of Spain to where guitaricos were popular)

José Serratosa (Blanch)

From Barcelona where he opened a workshop in 1890 and worked until his death in the 1930's.

He was probably most famous for making Guitars with detachable necks!

Francisco Torrés

The name Torrés was well known in Valencia as over the years a number of people with that family name had been famous luthiers. Francisco was the last of them but he was know more as the person who ran a factory producing guitars and other instruments for export rather then a luthier in his own right

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