Few figures in the history of the classical guitar carry the weight that Manuel Ramírez (1864–1916) does. Born in Alhama de Aragón, Spain, he rose from apprentice in his brother's Madrid workshop to become the most influential luthier of his generation — a man whose shop on Calle Arlabán trained the next generation of Spanish masters, whose instruments carried Andrés Segovia onto the world stage, and whose synthesis of tradition and experimentation defined what we now call the Madrid school of guitar making. In a career cut short at just fifty-two years of age, Manuel Ramírez left a legacy that continues to reverberate through every concert hall where a classical guitar is played.
Biography & Training
Manuel Ramírez grew up watching his older brother José Ramírez I build guitars in Madrid, joining the family workshop when José established it in 1882. Working alongside his brother gave Manuel a thorough grounding in the craft, but it was his independent spirit that would ultimately define him. In 1891, after nearly a decade in the family shop, Manuel struck out on his own. He originally considered moving to Paris to establish himself on the European stage, but ultimately chose to remain in Madrid — setting up a workshop that would soon rival, and in many respects surpass, the reputation of the family business he had left behind.
His workshop first operated from the Plaza de Santa Ana before moving to the more prominent address at Calle Arlabán, a location that would become a pilgrimage destination for guitarists across Spain and beyond. The young luthier wasted no time building his professional reputation: in 1893 he won a medal at the Chicago World's Fair, a remarkable early recognition of his craft. By 1912 his stature in Madrid's musical life was formalised when he was appointed official luthier to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid — a title that confirmed him as the capital's pre-eminent guitar maker.
His career and the wider tradition of classical guitar making were deeply intertwined with the legacy of Antonio de Torres, the Almería-born luthier whose innovations in body geometry and fan bracing had transformed the instrument in the nineteenth century. Manuel absorbed Torres's principles entirely, then made them his own.
Construction Philosophy
Manuel Ramírez built in the tradition of Torres, and contemporaries regarded him as Torres's natural successor in Spain. He retained the essential features that Torres had established — the expanded body dimensions, the seven-fan bracing system, the lightweight spruce top — but he did not merely replicate. He experimented methodically, refining the relationship between the fan braces and the wood grain of the top to achieve a tone that was somewhat lighter and more delicate than the robust projection of many Torres originals. This refinement made his instruments particularly attractive to flamenco players, who prized a quick, articulate response, but the guitars were equally at home in the concert repertoire.
A crucial part of the Ramírez sound came not from Manuel alone but from the exceptional craftsmen he gathered around him. Chief among them was Santos Hernández, whom Manuel hired around 1905 as workshop foreman. Hernández proved to be an inspired choice: he refined the Torres tradition further by angling the internal harmonic bar downward to brighten the treble response, and by positioning the fan braces more parallel to the grain of the top. The result was an instrument of unusual clarity and projection — qualities that would make the Ramírez-labelled guitars of this period among the most sought-after historical instruments in the world today. An understanding of these construction choices also helps explain why the fan-braced guitar remains the dominant form in classical lutherie more than a century later.
The Workshop and Its Apprentices
If Manuel Ramírez's guitars are his most visible legacy, his role as a teacher and workshop master is equally significant. The Calle Arlabán shop functioned as an unofficial academy of Spanish lutherie, and the names of the craftsmen who trained there read like a roll-call of the golden age of Spanish guitar making. Santos Hernández went on to establish one of the most celebrated independent workshops in Madrid after Manuel's death. Domingo Esteso (1882–1937) became renowned above all for his flamenco guitars. Modesto Borreguero, who entered the shop as a twelve-year-old apprentice in 1905, worked alongside Hernández and Esteso before eventually striking out on his own. Enrique García, who had also worked in the Madrid orbit, carried the tradition to Barcelona. The combined output of these makers formed the backbone of Spanish lutherie through the first half of the twentieth century — and their influence can be traced directly back to the methods and standards that Manuel Ramírez instilled in his workshop.
This pattern of master-to-apprentice transmission is a thread that runs through the entire history of fine guitar making. Makers such as Ignacio Fleta in Barcelona and, in France, Robert Bouchet each built on foundations laid by earlier generations, and the Ramírez workshop sits at the root of much of that Iberian tradition.
The Segovia Guitar
No episode in the story of Manuel Ramírez is more famous — or more consequential for the history of the classical guitar — than his encounter with a young Andrés Segovia in 1912. Segovia, then in his late teens and travelling to Madrid in search of a suitable concert instrument, visited the Calle Arlabán workshop. After hearing the young guitarist play, Ramírez was so struck by his talent that he gave him a guitar outright — an instrument that had been largely built by Santos Hernández and had originally been intended for the guitarist Antonio Jiménez Manjón.
The gesture was extraordinary in itself, but its consequences proved even more so. Segovia used the Ramírez guitar as his primary concert instrument from 1912 until 1937 — a period of twenty-five years that encompassed his rise from a promising Spanish musician to the most celebrated classical guitarist in the world. He played it at his landmark United States debut at New York's Town Hall in 1929, and it was the instrument on which many of his early recordings were made. The guitar is now housed at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, a tangible reminder of the moment when a luthier's generosity helped to change the course of concert music. The José Ramírez guitar legacy that continued after Manuel's death draws on this same heritage, though Manuel himself operated entirely independently of his brother's firm.
Legacy
Manuel Ramírez died on 25 February 1916, leaving behind a workshop whose influence on the classical and flamenco guitar is difficult to overstate. His instruments — relatively few of which survive in playable condition — are prized by collectors and scholars alike. They represent a pivotal moment in the evolution of the modern concert guitar: the point at which the innovations of Torres were absorbed, refined, and transmitted to a new generation of makers who would carry the tradition through the twentieth century.
His legacy is perhaps best measured not in the guitars that bear his label but in the luthiers his workshop produced and the guitarist his generosity helped to make. Santos Hernández, Domingo Esteso, Modesto Borreguero — each of these names stands for a distinct chapter in the history of Spanish lutherie, and each chapter begins in the same place: the workshop on Calle Arlabán where Manuel Ramírez set the standard for what a Spanish guitar could be. In the broader history of Spanish guitar tradition, his workshop occupies a place of singular importance, a bridge between the foundational work of Torres and the modern concert instrument that players and audiences recognise today.
For collectors and players who wish to engage with this history directly, surviving Manuel Ramírez guitars offer one of the most direct connections possible to the roots of the modern classical guitar. They are rare, historically significant, and acoustically remarkable — objects that embody a pivotal moment in the life of an instrument that has never stopped evolving.
Browse available Manuel Ramírez guitars → in the Siccas Guitars collection.
