The most traditional family of watchmakers in Madrid

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Sometimes stopping time is a conception that goes beyond metaphor.

In the back room of

and located for more than half a century at number 8 Murillo Street, things go differently.

There are six generations of watchmakers who have given their surname to a guild that marks its own rhythms.

Accustomed as a child to messing around in that microcosm of magnifying glasses, tweezers and spheres, Manuel Santolaya learned the trade with his father.

First, cleaning the pieces and making pins.

Watching, which is the best way to learn.

Then, disassembling and reassembling the clocks, each one with its own mechanism and its own character.

Watching also learned his daughter Arantxa.

It will be she who will be in charge of the watchmaking when her father definitively retires from the trade.

After four decades of service, this year he is already retiring from his position as restorer of National Heritage.

His Clock and Automata Workshop is, with more than 700 pieces,

.

There he was, from the first moment, in charge of the most complex ones.

"In the workshop of the Royal Palace I have also repaired countless clocks since, in 1982, I won the place by opposition. In the exam, in the practical part, they gave you one to disassemble it and reassemble it in a certain time", he recalls .

"There are clocks there that are unique pieces and practically the entire collection has passed through my hands in these 40 years. Some are very complicated: from automatons to astronomical ones. The planetariums have a mechanical complexity that also makes them very interesting. The more complex the machine is, the more you enjoy it," he says.

Each vintage watch that arrives to be restored at their shop, where they also make parts with a lathe and milling machine and repair wrist and pocket watches, is a new challenge for them.

"Vintage watchmaking is different, it has nothing to do with fine watches. It's a different type of work and even a tool," says Manuel.

"In the fine, the watches are all made in series, but before each one made his watch as he considered, with his calculations and his designs. It had nothing to do with one another.

as in The modern".

Unlike countries like England or Switzerland, there is no watchmaking school in Spain.

It is difficult to start in the guild and stay in it if it is not by family tradition.

"That's why we are less and less," he laments.

And, for this reason, the continuity that his daughter augurs for the profession is not only a source of pride for him, but for his entire family.

With pride he also boasts of being

, whose origins are located in La Rioja.

There, Bonifacio Santolaya and his son Pedro were already in charge of the maintenance and conservation of clocks.

Then Florentino, the latter's son and initiated in the trade thanks to them, did it, and would later run his uncle Pablo Sanz's watch shop in Almazán.

Years later, Pablo Santolaya, Florentino's son, was sent to Madrid to do his military service, and there he met his wife Pilar, with whom he settled in Madrid in 1954. That's how they ended up opening their store on Calle Murillo, where today his son and granddaughter continue.

So many years go a long way.

Among the anecdotes that father and daughter remember is, for example, that of a client who took several watches to be repaired.

He said that there was another in his house who stopped walking just when his mother died.

He never fixed it.

He preferred to leave it as it was.

Or that of that lady who arrived with a French wooden watch that had belonged to her family.

Her brothers sold it without her consent, but by chance she ended up finding it in an antique dealer.

Passwords that open safes written down on paper and even a love letter are other surprises they have come across while dismantling some machinery.

Because in each watch, as in each person, there is a story to discover in order to make all the gears fit together.

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