A few days after his retirement, Antonio Gallardo admits that he still feels this new stage in his life “like a long holiday”. After 48 years in the barrel-making sector, Gallardo is leaving a unique profession, that of master cooper, in which he started very young and in which he has witnessed how technology has completely transformed the process. Jorge Gallardo, his son and one of the last workers he trained, continues in Murúa as a living witness to the oral transmission of the cooper’s trade.
A long holiday
Active and energetic, Antonio is not used to the idea that his time as a master cooper is over. In fact, he admits that “retirement kept me awake at night because I couldn’t believe it was coming”. In fact, he says: “I worked very happily and I loved working; I was not one of those who looked forward to retirement”.
Little by little, this Catalan-born cooper is starting to get used to the idea of both the new stage ahead of him and the great professional stage he has just completed.
Not even the physical demands of his job made him think about retirement: “Despite being a job that forces you to be under stress, I have never tired of working.
“Tonelería Murúa is very demanding when it comes to manufacturing barrels”.
Murúa, in the heart
Antonio is not comfortable being the centre of attention, but he admits that the last day of work at the cooperage was very exciting, although he admits that he had a hard time. All his colleagues recognised his work and his ability to teach and train during his time at Tonelería Murúa.
After a career spanning 48 years in different companies, Antonio Gallardo says that Tonelería Murúa is special: “They take great care of the product and have a tremendous stock of wood, which gives you many possibilities to make top barrels”. He affirms that the amount of wood that is in the drying yard waiting for its optimum moment offers many possibilities to make very high quality barrels. Gallardo also acknowledges that Murúa “is very demanding when it comes to making barrels”.
They take great care of the product and have a tremendous wood park which gives you many possibilities to make top barrels.
Coopers’ wood
Antonio has trained more than 150 coopers in almost 50 years of professional experience. With this background, he says that “it is very difficult to train coopers; it is a very physical job, with many processes”. That is why, in his work, Tonelería Murúa decided to rotate the coopers throughout the different processes involved in making a barrel.
His work as a master cooper, he says, “is different from that of other coopers because I work, but in a different way; my job is also to supervise and help the other coopers in their work”.
A job, that of master cooper, which he assimilated over time thanks to a mixture of chance and vocation. Gallardo had the opportunity to work in France, where he was able to learn less rough processes and with a greater taste for form than what was done in Spain in the 1980s. Now that has changed a lot.
All this experience and knowledge that Antonio has acquired is combined with a vocation or taste for teaching: “Teaching a person is very difficult and can only be achieved with time and patience”. This master cooper with a hand for teaching admits that he was not a good student: “I didn’t like the teachers of my time and I wasn’t a good student”. So when, at the age of 16, he decided to go to a newly opened cooperage to try his hand at this unusual trade, no one could have imagined that he would end up as a master.
Son and ward
And in another twist of fate, Antonio has become the teacher of his own son Jorge. The father is honest: “Training Jorge has been very difficult because he is the most demanding of all the coopers I have trained”. The relationship, far from helping, has been more demanding: “I didn’t want his colleagues to think that because he was my son I was going to have less demands or more facilities”.
After working together for four years, Antonio sees Jorge as “very prepared”. And he adds: “He has something very important to dedicate himself to this: he really likes what he does”.
Although it may seem natural, Antonio assures that he did not offer him a job, nor did he force him to work with him or to follow the family trade: “He was the one who offered himself, we tried it and he liked it”. “But I’ve given him a lot of work”, Antonio assures us.
To become a cooper, Antonio insists: “You have to really like it, otherwise it’s impossible”. In addition, he says that “you have to be skilled with your hands and tools and have physical endurance”. From there, Gallardo assures us, you can start the trade.
Is it necessary to have the famous keen eye? Antonio answers: “It’s a sensitivity that you can apply in life”. He admits, for example, that after so many years working and training, he is able to know if someone wants to and can work in the sector. He affirms that it is an ability that can be taught: “The secret is to know how to look at the barrels because there is no other barrel like it”.
A changing profession
From that first day when Antonio walked through the door of the first cooperage at the age of 16, until he left the Navarrete factory of Tonelería Murúa 48 years later, the trade and its industrial sector have changed a lot. Technology has simplified some processes and automated others.
Gallardo says that it was impossible to foresee the current situation “from my perspective as an apprentice in the seventies”. He believes that this transformation is set to continue, with technology’s presence increasingly evident. Even so, the cooper’s work is still necessary.
