Name that gun!

[Nyles]

Eibar is a city in the Basque region of Spain that was the center of the old gunmaking industry there. Before the Spanish Civil War there were dozens if not hundreds of independent arms factories and gunmakers based there, but the only ones to survive the war and Franco's industrialization programmes were Star (Bonifacio Echevarria before 1919), Llama (Gabilondo y Urresti before 1932) and Astra (which had actually moved to Guernica in 1913). In the glory days of the Eibar gun making industry some of the better-known names were Orbea (king of the Spanish revolvers), Garate, Trocaola and Unceta Esperanza.

All of the guns made in that area either bore a company / gunmaker's name and adress or a trade name, and those adresses would include the city of Eibar. For example my Garate .455 is stamped "Manufactura Espescial de Revolvers, Garate Anitua y Cia - Eibar (Espana)". Eibar often gets applied as a blanket term to all Spanish handguns, espescially the smaller makers, but it's not actually a gunmaker.