In September of 1997 I wrote in my internet column: "Desde el escritorio de Randy Osborne" (From the desk of Randy Osborne):
"In 1959, Ignacio Fleta's waiting list was 6 months. Andres Segovia had already had his first Fleta at least a year. By 1961 Fleta's waiting list was a year and a half. In 1964-65 period the waiting list had grown to 4 1/2 years. Before going on I should mention that these were the most expensive priced guitars available, but they were at hand. You could walk into Ivor Mairants store and at times choose from maybe two that were for sale. By 1972 Ignacio Fleta's waiting list had grown to nine years, a length of time which would outstrip his own life as we lost him five years later. He also had been the cellist Pablo Casals' repair person. Ignacio had opened his shop in 1927 and about 1964 was the point in time when thereafter, all guitars that came out of the shop were a collaborative effort due to the aid of his sons Francisco and Gabriel. Today the sons of Fleta have an 18 year waiting list."
Also in July 2023, I learned that in a November 2008 Bonham's Auction there was a cello offered that was labelled: Ignacio Fleta e Hijos Construido en 1942 Calle Barcelona Espana.
This indicates the sons were already working with Ignacio, Francisco would have been 17 and Gabriel 13 when this was made. In 1997 I made the statement that the sons were working with their father, because the B. M. G. (Banjo, Mandolin and Guitar published in London) magazines from 1964 showed a photo of the sons wearing smocks while working.
I found this today and share it.
This is from "La Vanguardia" newspaper in Barcelona November 2, 1976, page 62, "Cosas del Teatro - Guitarrerias":
"Word is circulating behind the scenes of the flamenco world and in social gatherings and guitar workshops that Ignacio Fleta, the famous Barcelona guitar maker, has received four thousand dollars for a guitar built in his workshop for the United States. The popularity of this instrument hitherto relegated to limited circles of true aficionados or artists of a more or less folkloric bent has grown rapidly in a short time, regaining its importance and establishing a clear distinction between the top-tier concert performer and the cheap, tawdry strumming found in low-end taverns. Augusto Velera Cases reports on this news with his characteristic good taste and intelligent professionalism, and the French critic Mr. Chevan confirms the story indeed, just recently in *La Depeche*, Chevan published an article about the guitar......a craft whose production Spain monopolized for many years, but which has now spread to the point where Spanish guitar makers are in the minority. There are even artisans making the instrument in Japan. Nevertheless, there is a unanimous conviction that the Spanish are the true virtuosos of the guitar-making art.
There is something more to it than just the wood, the varnish, and the strings. The maker *quid divinum* that divine spark imbues the instrument with a part of his soul, his experience, and his good taste. Andres Segovia who owns dozens of guitars once told me that nothing compares to those built in Spain, and specifically in Barcelona. It is something at once mysterious and fateful, much like everything surrounding the exceptional art of flamenco. For the guitar played by a concert artist is not the same instrument even if physically identical as the one strummed by a folk player. Nor is the craft of guitar making something just any distinguished cabinetmaker can master there is a true "caste" of guitar makers. This is proven by the fact that a concert artist as eminent as Llobet tried his hand at building guitars and failed disastrously. Being a guitarist is one thing being a guitar maker is quite another. This reminds me of a well-known anecdote from the world of bullfighting. A famous matador decided to own a breeding ranch and subsequently went bankrupt. The rancher the Duke of Veragua, a good friend of his then told him: "What is happening to you is only natural just as being a guitarist is not the same as being a guitar maker, neither is killing bulls the same as breeding them."
Ignacio Fleta who, from his Barcelona workshop, has elevated the prestige of his art to the point of worldwide renown and admiration may well have charged the sum attributed to him yet it is also true that, as Valera notes, he requires eighteen years to deliver a custom-made guitar to anyone placing an order today. Naturally, compared to this, it brings a smile to see heaps of mass-produced guitars in shop windows, just as it is saddening to see the instrument prostituted by electric pickups and transmission cables. Ultimately, it is the same old story of the commercialized confusion that plagues our generation: a desire for everything to be quick and cheap. These are qualities incompatible with the seriousness of authentic art or the delicacy of the instrument itself an instrument not meant to have its body pounded or its strings merely plucked. "In Japan," says Valera, "they gutted a Fleta guitar to 'discover its secret. 'Ingenious, aren't they? A guitar is neither a transistor radio nor a camera. It is something so essentially sentimental, so fundamentally emotional, that the maker and the guitarist unite spiritually to produce under the inspiration of mastery the bewitching charm of a sublime sonata. This is a realm beyond the reach of a mere carpenter or the mercy of a casual strummer. Just as the theater has its 'lowbrow' genres, so too does the art of guitar-making." Pablo VILA SAN-JUAN