My arrival to this craft
I started making puppets at school following the teachings of my teacher Paco Peralta, a renowned artist who was awarded the Medal of Fine Arts by the Ministry of Culture. He created a unique style of puppets; all his work can be seen at the Francisco Peralta Puppet Collection Museum in Segovia.
He passed on to me the vocation of puppeteer, and from his teachings I have developed my entire career.
One of the great lessons he left me is that a puppet is movement, and it must reach expressive perfection in order to communicate with the audience.
Through my relationship with many other puppeteers and by learning new techniques, I have been adapting this knowledge to the puppets I wanted to build for my company. You could say that I am self-taught and, at the same time, a student of many masters.
In 1977 we founded the company La Tartana, which has performed more than 50 plays. Since 2005, Inés Maroto and I have worked in the workshop and directed the company.

Our work
In the workshop we work with many materials: iron, aluminum, resins, papier-mâché, silicone, clay, wood, and also with small motors, lights, etc., because our work meets many demands:
We start by sketching what the objects or puppets and stage sets should look like, according to a particular style that will define our specific production. The historical period, tone, rhythm, etc. that we want to give to the play will be decided.
We research how to improve the movement of objects in order to achieve their best expressive function. The manipulation of a puppet takes into account the number of people who will manipulate it; it is also necessary for it to retain its stage presence even when not being manipulated. Thanks to the research carried out in La Tartana’s workshop, the company’s puppets have become highly expressive; they are manipulated with fingers, hands and even feet, and are supported by springs, hangers, etc.
In our workshop we also look for solutions so that the puppets become automata, that is, characters that move mechanically on stage, sometimes operated from the lighting and sound desk and other times activated by the actors.
At La Tartana’s workshop we don’t only make puppets, we also create all the stage sets. On many occasions, the stage set also plays a leading role in the production and defines the space in which the puppets move, which varies depending on whether they are glove puppets, tabletop puppets, large-scale puppets, etc. For us, the set is always something alive and in transformation.
Each La Tartana show brings new effects and offers new solutions to achieve the desired staging.

Who our work is for
Our work is not only for La Tartana; we also offer installations for children to cultural centers and public administrations. We have created fantastic landscapes and Christmas scenes. We create both play spaces for children and large scenes with automata, accompanied by light and sound.
We have also exhibited small mobile scenes with puppets from shows that are no longer on tour. A distinctive feature of these exhibitions is that the puppets also move (some can be manipulated by hand, others move with light and sound by pressing a button). These exhibitions have been presented in theatres and museums in Spain and other European countries. Some of these scenes can be seen at the Puppet Centre in Alcorcón.

Present and future of the profession
I believe that the profession of puppet creator is growing in artistic recognition. Today, the puppet is more appreciated as an object of artistic and historical value: museums of traditional puppets and contemporary puppeteers have opened, such as Paco Peralta’s museum. The puppet, which at the beginning of the 20th century was primarily an object of folk art, and only entered some homes as a toy or entertainment item, went through a difficult period in Spain after the Civil War. Only a few companies or performance spaces remained: the little puppet theatre in El Retiro in Madrid with glove puppets; La Tía Norica in Cádiz; puppets on television handled by ventriloquists; and a few family companies.
From the 1970s onwards, there was renewed interest in puppet shows, and many workshops emerged where puppets were created. Their enormous expressive potential developed, and puppets began to be made for all kinds of performances: at La Tartana we stage operas, classic plays, adaptations of literary works, and children’s stories.
This art is expanding as workshop work thanks to the many materials used. Regarding the future of puppetry as a theatrical performance, it does not appear to be in decline either.
It is important to distinguish puppet theatre, which creates puppets to be brought on stage, from a type of show called object theatre, which does not create specific puppets but transforms any object into a character.

Transmission of knowledge
Both Inés Maroto and I have been passing on our knowledge of the art of puppetry through workshops for many years. Since the founding in 2021 of the Puppet Centre in Alcorcón, a center promoted by La Tartana, we have been spreading this art in a concrete and structured way: our students there receive comprehensive two-year training in the art of puppetry.
Young people interested in this profession are now starting to have the opportunity to learn it, and it is no longer a profession passed on solely through family transmission.