Charity to our ears
Amy Winehouse's Gata guitar makers donate instrument for cancer charity
A GATA craft shop which has made guitars for Amy Winehouse and Will Smith has donated one of its instruments to a Jávea-based cancer survivor and activist as a raffle prize.
Guitarras Bros, run by brothers Adam, Juan and David Broseta – who took over running the family business when their father Francisco died last year - has manufactured a guitar with the help of TV presenter Wyoming, who is also the lead singer of the band Wyoming y los Insolventes.
María Ferrer, who has recovered from breast cancer which was diagnosed only by chance when she paid for a private mammogram as she was too young for the routine screening programme, hopes to raise €2,000 via her Christmas raffle, which will be given to ASPANION, an association supporting families of children with cancer whose Jávea branch chair is Madeleine Powell.
The late Amy Winehouse composed the tracks on her world-famous Back to Black album, which won five Grammys, with her Gata guitar.
And comedian and presenter Pablo Motos, on his fun, chaotic talk show El Hormiguero ('The Ant's Nest') has given numerous Broseta guitars to top celebrities on air.
The latest was Hollywood actor Will Smith, during the show's 2,000th episode in June – the instrument had been handengraved with his name by Francisco Broseta weeks before he died, as Smith was his favourite screen star.
Tom Hanks, Russell Crowe, Richard Gere, Jeremy Irons, Suffolk-born pop sensation Ed Sheeran, and singer and former French First Lady Carla Bruni, have all been given Broseta guitars on the set of El Hormiguero.
The instruments are always hand-made and only ever use the finest wood, sometimes cured and dried for over a century, and imported from as far away as India, Madagascar, Brazil, México and Hondurás.