In 2008 the Diputación Provincial de Guadalajara bought the contents of the workshop and the Archive of Santos Hernández for El Centro de la Vihuela de Mano y la Guitarra Española “José Luis Romanillos”. This has facilitated the reconstruction of his workshop with his workbench, his grindstone, bending iron and almost a hundred of his tools, guitar, bandurria and Spanish laúd plantillas, and his ingenious solera for assembling his guitars.
Santos Bayón, José Luis Romanillos and Mª Antonia Pérez.
The Santos Hernández Archives contains a collection of over one hundred letters and documents which give important details about his activities, prices of woods and the guitars he made in his workshop in calle Aduana in Madrid. There is a Register for the year 1926 with meticulous details of the running of his workshop.
There are two panels of photographs on display (a third one in store) picturing the many personalities who passed through his workshop and who used his instruments. For over twenty-five years Andrés Segovia used a guitar made by Santos Hernández when he was working as foreman in Manuel Ramírez’s workshop in Madrid. Segovia travelled worldwide spreading the art of the Spanish guitar and Spanish music. The Spanish guitarist Regino Sáinz de la Maza gave the premier of Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez para Guitarra y Orquesta in 1940 playing on his Santos Hernández guitar called La Rubia. There is also a photograph of Ramón Montoya who used a “Santos” guitar called La Leona in 1936 when he recorded a selection of flamenco themes marking the development of the flamenco guitar.
