Juan José has just won second prize at a guitar competition in Bilbao. Congratulations! I made this guitar for him last year and I am very pleased to see that it is serving him well. What a great young player. Competitons are very stressful and difficult to face but if you have the stomach for it you can use them as a springboard to launch your career. Good luck with the next one you decide to participate in.

Closing night at the exhibition Granada, ciudad de la guitarra was a great success. Some people had to be turned away at the door because of the 100 person capacity limit on the hall. I had heard that Edson Lopes was a great guitarist but he exceeded expectations and delighted everyone in the crowd. It is always a pleasure to attend a guitar concert where the audience is not made up exclusively of guitar-makers and guitar players. He played a varied programme including Carulli, Sor, Turina and Moreno Torroba. My wife and I had the pleasure afterwards of sharing a meal with him and his son along with Jose Luis Vigil and Marcus Toscano. Thank you maestro for a great evening.

Manuel de Falla Cadiz, 1876) was a cornerstone of the intellectual community in Granada and obviously a very relevant composer and pianist. However, his friendship and correspondence with Miquel Llobet and Andrés Segovia make him that much more important for guitarists and guitar-makers. He was also a driving force behind the acceptance of Andalusian folk music as a cultural form on a par with more intellectually recognised forms of music. It was this bent that led him to organise the “Concurso de Cante Jondo” in 1922 in Granada.

I have often noted this aspect of Granada; it is very often non-granadinos or adopted granadinos that manage to raise support for projects like this. For some reason, a local is held back by his peers when he tries to do something good for the city whereas the “outsider” does not incite so much jealousy. Still, there must have been more going on in Falla’s day judging from the quote on the wall at his house (the museum). It says: ” In Granada I feel like I am at the centre of the world, as if Granada were a little Paris”.

Falla’s house has been kept exactly as it was when he died in accordance with the wishes of his surviving sister. A lovely, well kept piano and a Benito Ferrer guitar are part of his legacy althought the guitar is not displayed. So many artists die without the recognition they deserve so it is refreshing to see at least this one case where the family and the town  council took steps to preserve his legacy. Perhaps the more important aspect of his legacy is the Archivo which is kept in the Auditorium building and recieves visiting scholars from all over the world.

Last night saw the last in the series of presentations at the Caja Rural exhibition. Some of the best guitar-makers in Granada met to publicly condemn false labelling, unethical behaviour, appropriation of what should be universal heritage and abuses of government recognitions for personal gain. A very few supposed professionals are giving all of us a bad name and need to be stopped. As Daniele Chiesa said last night, the prestige and fame of Granada; it’s ablility to support so many guitar-makers is a very fragile thing. If we don’t protect it it might come tumbling down.

The video loop at the exhibition includes the video “Guitarrero” by dc Chavez filmed mostly at the workshop of Bernd and Lucas Martin. Juan García Fernández spends a few hours a week working onsite at the exhibition. French polisher Javier Campos will be there for a few days as well. The other local paper finally got round to writing something about the exhibition and so yesterday was probably the busiest day of all.  The Andalucian public TV Canal Sur channel also visited yesterday and today they should be showing what they filmed on the local news.