Antonio Marín Montero came into the world of guitar making from nowhere in particular — no father, uncle, or grandfather who had ever built an instrument, no family workshop waiting for him to inherit. He was born in January 1933 in the Plaza Puerta del Sol, in Granada's Realejo quarter, and everything he came to know about the guitar he learned the hard way: workshop by workshop, mentor by mentor, on his own.

A Cabinetmaker Among the Marquetry Shops

Marín's earliest training had nothing to do with guitars at all. He passed through a series of Granada's marquetry and cabinetmaking workshops as a young man, absorbing the discipline of fine woodwork before he ever thought of building an instrument. While still quite young, he found his way into the workshop of Francisco Moya — though he didn't stay long, because another master craftsman, Recaredo Veredas, quickly noticed his exceptional skill with a woodworking gouge and brought him into his own shop instead.

In 1957, Marín joined the workshop of a master known simply as Pérez, continuing to sharpen his craft. Then, in 1959, on his own father's advice, he paid a visit that would prove decisive for the rest of his career: a workshop at number 26 Cuesta de Gomérez, just beneath the walls of the Alhambra, run by the guitar maker Eduardo Ferrer.

Learning Beside the Alhambra

Ferrer's workshop was, by every account, the true beginning of Marín's life as a guitar maker. It was there that his cabinetmaking background — already more advanced than the somewhat improvised methods still common among Granada's guitar makers at the time — began to reshape the way local instruments were built. Marín's friendship with a fellow craftsman, Manuel López Bellido, deepened during these years through regular visits to Ferrer's shop, and the contrast between the precision of formal cabinetmaking and the more improvised methods used by many guitar makers of the era struck both of them powerfully.

"The guitar is one of the best and most beautiful instruments in the world, with different nuances and sonorities that grant independence to the guitar."Domingo Prat, disciple of Miguel Llobet — a line Marín has carried with him throughout his career

Montero y Bellido

In 1960, Marín and Bellido decided to strike out together, forming a partnership they called Montero Bellido. They began by building bandurrias and lutes, only later moving on to guitars, which they signed under their shared label — some of which were also sold under the names of established workshops including Eduardo Ferrer and Manuel de la Chica. Their combined background in fine woodworking let them develop new construction and assembly techniques that quickly set their instruments apart, and the pair's reputation grew fast enough that the celebrated guitarist Manuel Cano personally introduced them to Manuel Contreras, the prominent Madrid luthier, who began supplying them with wood so they could build guitars for sale through his own Madrid shop.

Word of the Montero Bellido guitars soon reached well beyond Spain. The two began exporting instruments to Japan, and it was through Japanese clients that, in 1977, they were introduced to a name that would change the rest of Marín's career: the celebrated French luthier Robert Bouchet.

A Journey to Paris

Following the dissolution of the Montero Bellido partnership, Marín traveled to France and spent several months working directly inside Robert Bouchet's Paris workshop, where the two luthiers built three guitars side by side. It was an extraordinary opportunity: Bouchet, a self-taught former painter who had almost single-handedly founded the French school of classical guitar making, rarely worked so closely with any other maker, let alone one from Spain's own storied guitar-making tradition.

When Marín returned home, he asked Bouchet's permission to keep building the guitar the two men had developed together during those months in Paris — and Bouchet agreed. Marín has built that same model, now known among collectors as the Bouchet–Marín Montero, ever since, refining it with exceptional precision over decades of continued work.

The Leading Voice of the Granada School

Over time, Antonio Marín Montero became the single most prominent figure of what's now known as the Granada school of guitar making — a tradition built collectively over generations by the city's guitarreros, many of whom worked alongside or trained under one another in a close, cooperative community. Marín's pursuit of perfection, and his generosity in sharing what he'd learned, drew a steady stream of aspiring luthiers to his workshop over the decades, both Spanish and international.

Chief among his students was his own nephew, José Marín Plazuelo, who began learning at his uncle's side in 1974 and has continued working alongside him ever since — well over four decades of shared work at the same workbench. José González López, Plazuelo's brother-in-law, joined the workshop as well and remains active there today. Marín's other nephew, Francisco "Paco" Santiago Marín, likewise trained under his uncle and went on to become a respected maker of Spanish guitars in his own right, and still others — including René Baarslag and Rafael Moreno — carried his teaching into their own independent workshops.

In 1979, Marín and José Marín Plazuelo moved into a new workshop at the end of Cuesta del Caldeiro, where both men, remarkably, have continued to build guitars together ever since — more than four decades in the same space, following the same meticulous construction process passed down from that Parisian collaboration with Bouchet.

Recognition at Home and Abroad

Marín's reputation has long since spread across Europe, the United States, and Japan, and his instruments are prized by classical and flamenco performers alike. Granada itself has honored him repeatedly over the years: in 2007, the University of Granada awarded him its Bellas Artes prize, and in 2017 the Real Academia de Bellas Artes granted him its Gold Medal in recognition of a lifetime spent perfecting the craft. That same year, the European Guitar Foundation established the Concurso Internacional de Construcción de Guitarras Antonio Marín Montero — an international guitar-making competition named in his honor, drawing professional luthiers from around the world to Granada to compete in his name. He has also been named an honorary member of the Peña de la Platería, one of Granada's most respected flamenco associations, in recognition of his craft.

Nearly ninety years old, and still working daily in his workshop — crafting instruments as sought-after today as at any point in a career spanning almost seven decades.On Marín's continued work into his tenth decade

Still at the Bench

Even now, well into his nineties, Antonio Marín Montero continues to work at his bench nearly every day. Demand for his guitars has grown so far beyond his modest, deliberately unhurried output that finding one for sale has become genuinely difficult; clients on both sides of the Atlantic can expect to wait months, if not longer, for an instrument bearing his label. It's a scarcity that mirrors nearly every great guitar maker before him — the inevitable result of a man who never once let demand dictate the pace at which he was willing to work.