Eladio Fernández · The Almería School
Eladio Fernández built in Almería, the city of Antonio de Torres, in the workshop tradition of Gerundino Fernández, the most important Andalusian maker of the second half of the twentieth century. The two were brothers. El Hermano, The Brother, takes its name from that relationship. What the label declares is the other half of it, in the maker's own words: Eladio Fernández, Constructor Artesano de Guitarras, Discípulo del Maestro Decano Gerundino Fernández, Calle Quemadero 2, Almería, 1989. Brothers by birth, master and disciple by declaration.
El Hermano is the second instrument held from the Fernández dynasty of Almería, and the first with the relationship declared on the label itself: master and disciple, Gerundino and Eladio, nine years apart, both building in Torres's city. Alongside El Almería, the Gerundino Fernández negra of 1980, the pair documents a transmission of craft within one family and one street's walk of workshops. Construction woods are confirmed.
The Almería Dynasty
Antonio de Torres worked in Almería; Gerundino Fernández carried the Torres construction tradition through the twentieth century; and Eladio Fernández declared himself Gerundino's disciple on the label of every guitar he built. A maker who names his teacher on his own label is documenting a lineage in the most permanent medium available to him. El Hermano and El Almería together hold that lineage in one archive. The Almería lineage and what a maker's own label can establish are covered in the ANICETO University curriculum.
Instrument Record
| Instrument Name | El Hermano · The Brother |
| Maker | Eladio Fernández · Constructor Artesano de Guitarras · Calle Quemadero 2, Almería |
| Year | 1989 |
| School | Almería · Held with El Almería (Gerundino Fernández, 1980) |
| Type | Flamenca Negra |
| Top | Spruce |
| Back & Sides | Rosewood |
| Scale Length | 660mm scale · 53mm nut |
| Label | Confirmed: Eladio Fernández · Constructor Artesano de Guitarras · Discípulo del Maestro Decano Gerundino Fernández · C/. Quemadero 2 · Almería · 1989 |
| Tuners | Mechanical · confirmed in photography |
| Collection Role | Almería Dynasty · The Disciple |
Label confirmed. The instrument has been professionally inspected and conserved to museum standard. Interventions are documented and kept to the minimum the instrument requires. Its structural and provenance record is maintained privately under museum archival standard.
Tradition & Use
The flamenco of Almería belongs to the mining east of Andalucía: the taranto and the tarantas, heavy songs shaped by the mines rather than the coast. It is also the province where Antonio de Torres, working in the 1850s, gave the guitar the form it still holds. Every guitar in this collection descends from decisions made in Almería workshops.
The story of this guitar is in the curriculum.
The Almería school, the Torres lineage, and the meaning of a declared maker dynasty are worked through in the ANICETO University curriculum, Module 2 · The Makers.
Explore the Curriculum