Flamenco and Classical guitars ready to be evaluated by the jury. Yesterday afternoon we heard all 17 guitars and the jury had some time as well to examine the workmanship and aesthetics of the guitars. They will continue their labour today and announce which guitars will be passing on to the second phase. The photo below shows jury members on the right and participants on the left with representatives from the Granada town council. There are five guitar-makers from the province of Granada participating, two from Málaga, three from Madrid, one from Barcelona, one from Sevilla and the international participants include a maker from Portugal, one from Germany two from China and one from Japan. The quality of the guitars is quite high overall and in the listening tests I heard a very few sub-par instruments and two or three that seemed a head above the rest, mostly in terms of the beauty of the sound. It is exciting to see so many makers and to meet Illustrious members of the guitar world like Manuel Caceres, Edmund Blöchinger and Pepe Romero. The guitars were played by Florian Blöchinger (classicals) and Luis Mariano (flamencos).