I was born in Úbeda, a World Heritage city in the South of Spain, in 1981. I was ten when I attended my first flamenco show at school. Not long ago, my brother Javi and I found an old guitar. We fixed it as best as we could... only three strings left, but I tried to make music out of it as I saw in that flamenco show. Everything started right there.
I discovered the guitar being very young, but I started playing years later, and even studied classical guitar at the Conservatory of Ubeda. I wasn't born in family of artists, but all of them were key factors for me to realize about my love for music. Without thinking too much about it, my surrounding environment along with my obsessive curiosity both set the foundations of something I wouldn't understand until much time later.
I became a Telematics Engineer and I worked for international companies for several years, although I didn't stop playing guitar never ever, as well as other instruments like bass and electric guitar. Anyway, I felt I was missing something. So I started diving deep down into the guitar world. I spent three years almost exclusively studying everything related with the instrument: the building process, organology, sound architecture, finishing, chemicals, botanics, physics of sound... at the same time I entered the CAD design to develop my own guitar, applying my aquired knowledge and all available technologies to make the molds, templates and necessary jigs for guitar making. Finally I atteded a guitar making course with master D. Rafael López Porras to experience by myself building an instrument with my own hands. That course was a point of no return in my life. It took me one additional year to complete the guitar I made in that course, and another two more years to get ready for my first custom order, of course it was tailor made 😉
In 2012 I quit my job as an Engineer and establish my first workshop in Granada becoming a full time luthier. First orders start to arrive. In 2013 I moved to Ubeda, my birth place. In 2014 I was invited along with other 9 luthiers around the world to show my guitars in the I Altamira Guitar Expo in Shanghai (China). In 2015 I got the JAC Young Entrepreneur Award and the very same year, master Robert O'Brien selects me to present the Flamenco Guitar Making DVD in where I explain the whole process of making the instrument. In 2016 I am invited to the I Guitar Expo in Hong Kong. In 2017 I start a new line: guitar making courses and the response was phenomenal. People all around the world came to my workshop to make their guitars under my teaching. In 2018 I had a dream come true: the I Madinter Scholarship. Also in 2018, Robert O'Brien invited me to a new project: a Guitar Making Course at his workshop in Parker, CO. USA. The course was so succesful that a second and third edition happened the next year, in 2019. In that same time, I got the Arts & Music Award by Argentaria. In 2020 I finally made real a project I was working on: the first eco-friendly guitar making course, using exclusively sustainable woods and eco-friendly materials, again thanks to Madinter. In 2021 I become the first luthier to make an SLA Optic Fabricated resin rosette. In 2022, instruments from my workshop are yet in +25 countries around the world. In 2023 I achieved another milestone: 100 students has completed their guitars under my guidance. Today I am about to make another dream come true: to offer my own guitar limited collections based on my own designs and ideas. It is a quick evolving and challenging world, but I am still focused in just one thing: making the best bespoke guitars.
Since day one, my philosophy has remained the same: true custom made guitars, built as one-of-a-kind instrument, hand made one by one. In order to achieve it: work as hard as needed, set in place as many technologies, materials, and artistic disciplines as required. From CAD design to art painting, from old traditional crafts to the latest CAM techniques like 3D printing, CO2 and Blue laser, CNC... Unique guitars, made for the player who will play them. During this time I had the honor to have my instruments ordered by classical and flamenco players from Spain, Portugal, Switzerland , Austria, China, Iran, Nepal and USA. I feel also very proud to share this beautiful craft with students from all places around the world, including Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, United Kingdom, Croatia, Switzerland, United States of America and Australia.
I would like to thank you for these minutes you spent reading these lines and your interest in my work. To guitar lovers like you I am grateful and owe the privilege of making a living out of my passion... and also to a long list of masters who were a model, a helpful hand, and a source of inspiration in my very first steps. I will always honour them: Ana Espinosa, Renè Baarslag, José Manuel Fernández, Antonio Ariza, Juan La Bella, Julio Castaños, Julián Moraga, Francisco Delgado, Óscar Quero, Conchi Cabrera and Robbie O'Brien. And of course, with special love, to my brother Juan.
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