Spain and the guitar are inseparable. They are inseparable for reasons that are inexplicable, no matter how hard we try to invent theories. The guitar and its ancestors have always been there, not just in the time of living memory, but far beyond. Music specifically composed for the guitar and notated for it goes back some five hundred years, but evidence is preserved to show their presence in Spanish culture for at least another five centuries.

This recording achieves the impossible, a millennium of guitars in the hands of one guitarist: a feat of virtuosity never previously attempted and never previously accomplished. This is the product of an incredible endeavour that has been the life’s work of José Luis Pastor. On this recording we hear not only the guitars of contemporary Spain—classical, flamenco and electric—but also of the past, with names that are increasingly remote the further back they are traced.

In perfect harmony with the project is the place chosen for the recording, La Gruta de las Maravillas. The stalactites and stalagmites of this cave, witnesses of the evolution of Time, now house the sounds of ten centuries of guitar, impregnated by drops of water, which as guests of honor in each piece, can be heard, as if they were simply another part of its history.