I've passed up some Spanish doubles at very cheap prices because of this bad reputation. But it's hard to believe that they are all bad, and that every Spanish gunmaker was unaware of the importance of hardening and tempering critical action parts.
The only Spanish double I own is a 1970's vintage I. Ugartechea Falcon 12 ga. with 3" chambers. A guy was walking it around a gun show several years ago, and I made him a very lowball offer when he offered to sell it to me. To my surprise, he took my offer.
I have never had any reason to look inside the action, and it has been totally reliable in the hundreds of times that I have fired it. I use it around the house to shoot grackles and starlings. It comes in handy to digest higher velocity and higher pressure shells that I would not want to use in any of my old vintage doubles. Unlike a lot of cheap Spanish or Turkish guns, the engraving does not look like it was done by a beaver with carbide teeth. The frame is bone charcoal color case hardened, so they must have known a little something about heat treatment processes. Wood to metal fit, finish, and the cut checkering is decent too. I'm not fond of the beavertail forend, and the fairly sharp comb on the buttstock gets your attention a bit when you fire magnum loads. But other than that, I have zero complaints.
