THE VIHUELA de MANO and
THE SPANISH GUITAR

José Luis Romanillos Vega & Marian Harris Winspear

José Luis Romanillos Vega was born in Madrid in 1932 where he learnt the craft of cabinet making from the age of thirteen. He moved to England in 1956 to work in psychiatric hospitals in Epsom and North London. He made his first guitar in London in 1961 and in 1970 he moved to Semley, Wiltshire, where he began his professional career as a guitar maker encouraged by Julian Bream, who played Jose L. Romanillos guitars for many years. In 1987 he published the biography of Antonio de Torres, the first book written about a Spanish guitar maker. He has lectured on the history of the Spanish guitar as well as giving courses in many countries on the development and construction of the Spanish guitar. Although he has retired from guitar making he keeps in close contact with his son Liam Romanillos who continues with the family tradition in Gillingham, Dorset. He has settled in Guijosa, Spain, where since 2001 he has organised, with his son Liam, a course on Spanish guitar making. He also continues with his research into the development and the history of the vihuela de mano and the Spanish guitar.

Marian Harris Winspear was born in Wilton, Yorkshire, in 1937. Ten years later the family moved to Buckinghamshire where she attended Slough High School. In 1959 she qualified as a State Registered Nurse, at University College Hospital in London, and in the same year she married Jose Luis Romanillos. They have three sons and ten grandchildren. She has carried out a great deal of research on the history of the vihuela de mano and the Spanish guitar and over the last twenty years she has contributed to the publication of the biography of Antonio de Torres, the Catalogue for the Exhibition of Spanish antique guitars in Alicante in 1990, and the Catalogue for the Exhibition of Spanish guitars held in New York and Madrid in 1991 & 1992.