They can build very good made to measure game guns in Spain that quite amazingly commoner with good job can actually afford.
I wonder about lack of real old Spanish guns. Was it that they were not imported into America like old Greener guns they disappeared during Spanish Civil War or simply fell apart from hard use. Obviously our armies did not rescue Spain from Hitlerism so their guns could not be freed and brought back here in "green duffel bags". I seem to recall in centuries past Spanish barrels like their old swords were considered among worlds best. Given that I have hard time believing that well made Spanish guns simply fell apart from hard use.
You, sir, are right on target.
Two things squeezed the guns, and especially the older guns, out of Germany, France, and England. For Germany and France, that thing was foreign invasion and looting. For England, it was economic collapse and a hundred years of confiscatory taxation that forced the well-to-do to sell whatever they had to make the estate taxes.
Spain was never invaded nor occupied in the 20th century and so never looted by enemies or allies.
The only occasion I know of when confiscatory taxation had any impact on Spanish gun ownership was circa 2006, when a yearly per gun tax was established. That flushed tens of thousands of Spanish ‘tax forfeiture’ shotguns out and into the hands of the Civil Guard. This was the first time I saw any number of the older (i.e. pre-Civil War) shotguns outside of estates. The really nice guns were quickly snapped up by Spanish collectors and the Spanish gun shops that cater to those collectors. I was lucky enough to get a beautiful Joaquín Fernández model 15000 (‘Oliva’) made circa 1920 from these guns. I missed an outstanding Eduardo Schilling model 28 (circa 1911) because I hesitated, and let pass a Schilling model Eustaquio and model 310 (circa 1890) because I don’t care for hammer or under lever guns.
Many of the more recent, and more common, guns were imported into the USA (primarily by CAI) and sold cheap. At one point I bought four guns from CAI, sight unseen, for $167.87 each, delivered. One of these four guns was a wonderful VS box lock, proof year 1939, and another was a mint condition Garbi box lock. The third and fourth guns were a mid-range ZH side lock and an entry level Jabe box lock.
Bottom line: 99.9% the really nice guns made from about 1880 on are still there, and still in some estate or a collector’s inventory.
