Paulino Bernabé Sr. was born in Madrid on 2 July 1932. His path into lutherie began, unusually, as a musician: he studied guitar under Daniel Fortea, himself a pupil of the great Francisco Tárrega — a lineage that connected the young Bernabé directly to the concert tradition his instruments would later serve.

That musical training led him toward the workshop rather than the stage. In 1954, Bernabé became an apprentice guitar maker under José Ramírez III, at the time the most influential classical guitar house in Spain. He rose steadily through the workshop over the following years, eventually becoming its head artisan — the craftsman responsible for the instruments that left the Ramírez bench during a period when Andrés Segovia himself was closely associated with the brand.

After roughly fifteen years inside that system, Bernabé made the decisive break. In 1969, he left Ramírez to open his own workshop in Madrid, setting out to build guitars entirely on his own terms — a move that placed him, almost overnight, among the small handful of independent makers taken seriously by the Spanish concert world.

What set Bernabé apart from other Madrid-trained luthiers who went independent was not simply craftsmanship — it was a genuine willingness to depart from the construction methods he'd spent fifteen years mastering. Though deeply rooted in the old Madrid school, Bernabé was, by every account, an innovator and an experimenter at heart.

The proprietary strutting system. Rather than continuing to build on the fan-bracing conventions of his training, Bernabé developed his own internal strutting system for the soundboard — a distinct approach to how the bars beneath the top were arranged, shaped, and tuned. It became the single most defining technical signature of his workshop, distinguishing a Bernabé instrument from a Ramírez one even to a listener who couldn't see the label inside.

A recognizable voice. The construction methods Bernabé developed gave his instruments a specific tonal identity: strong, present basses, clear and articulate trebles, and an unusually wide range of tone color across the fingerboard — qualities that reviewers and players would go on to describe as instantly recognizable within a few notes.

The wider world of lutherie took notice quickly. In 1974, Bernabé received the Gold Medal at the International Crafts Exhibition in Munich, and in 1982 the Chamber of Commerce of Madrid named him Artisan of the Year — formal recognition of a body of work that, by then, stood clearly apart from the workshop that had trained him.

Paulino Bernabé II was born in Madrid on 9 June 1960, directly in the workshop where his father worked. The family lived above the shop, and from his earliest years the younger Bernabé absorbed the trade simply by watching — his father handling wood with a care and deliberateness that left a lasting impression.

That early exposure eventually became formal training. Paulino II began a proper apprenticeship under his father at seventeen, learning toolwork, the behavior of different woods, and the principles of construction from a craftsman who demanded precision from the very first cut. He formally joined his father's workshop full-time in the early 1980s, not long after completing his military service at the Army's Polytechnic School in Madrid — though, having grown up on the workshop floor, he had in truth never really left it.

Father and son went on to work side by side for more than twenty-five years, sharing what both later described as a near-total absorption in the craft — the kind of collaboration where, as Paulino II put it, even holidays and rest turned into conversations about the next instrument. Paulino Sr. described his son as "his best and most faithful disciple," and over time the younger man's work became, by most accounts, indistinguishable from his father's own.

Growing up inside his father's construction methods gave Paulino II an unusually deep starting point — but he was, like his father, unwilling to simply repeat what he'd inherited. Sharing the same restless research instinct, he went on to develop his own refinements to the family's building methods, continuously testing changes against what he could hear in the finished instrument.

Guitars bearing the Bernabé II label are known for a bold, distinctly Spanish tone: robust basses paired with strong, cutting trebles, and a sound that listeners and reviewers alike have described as powerful, clear, and tightly focused, with notable sustain, projection, and punch. It is a voice that is recognizably descended from his father's, while carrying its own refinements in balance and clarity.

Since taking over the Madrid workshop from his father, Paulino II has continued building instruments played by internationally recognized concert guitarists, including John Williams and Johanna Beisteiner — a reach that extends well beyond the collectors and specialists who first sought out his father's work.

Paulino Bernabé Sr. worked alongside his son until shortly before his death in Madrid on 10 May 2007, closing a career that had begun as a teenage apprentice under José Ramírez III more than half a century earlier and ended as the founder of an entirely independent, widely imitated school of construction.

Paulino II inherited far more than a workshop address. In 2011 he founded the Spanish Guitar Foundation, an association dedicated to protecting the heritage of the Spanish guitar-making tradition and supporting young players — an institutional effort to safeguard the same craft culture that had shaped both his father's career and his own. The Foundation also maintains a notable collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century guitars, preserving the historical record of the tradition the Bernabés helped extend.

Today, Paulino II leads a team of four skilled luthiers inside the Madrid workshop, continuing to refine the construction methods that define the Bernabé sound. What began as one craftsman's decision to leave a famous workshop and build guitars his own way has become, two generations later, a lineage in its own right — one that current and future makers now study the way Bernabé Sr. once studied Ramírez.