The Granada gunsmith with an army of followers

Cristina Orantes lives surrounded by pistols, rifles, shotguns and ammunition and she couldn't be happier. She turned her passion into a job at the age of 20, motivated by her father, who instilled in her a love of guns. They worked together for years and she ended up inheriting the family business, which today enjoys great success. The Orantes' gun shop has regular customers as well as the thousands of people who follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Her father was a Guardia Civil officer but his career was cut very short following a work-based accident when he was just 33. He decided to study to become a gunsmith and went on to set up the business in Las Gabias, Granada province. "I was going to study architecture, but what I liked was guns, so I went to school in Eibar", Cristina explains.

She did the practical training and learned how to repair and adjust weapons, change the handguard and look for errors in the operating mechanism, among other aspects of the job. She shared the business with her father until he retired and handed it over to her. For the last fifteen years, she has been in charge.

The shop is open from 8am until 10pm and customers can buy guns, have theirs repaired or get help with bureaucracy. A large part of their work consists of helping to obtain licences, renew them and carry out other related procedures. "Recently a Belgian man came who had just retired and moved to Dúrcal. He brought his guns with him, so we have done the paperwork for him. There are also those who are retiring and have always dreamed of owning one, so we explain to them about the exam," explains Cristina.

Apart from these issues, her work focuses on sales and, above all, repairs. For the last few months, Leo, her husband, has been helping her with the physical and online sales so that she can focus on other tasks. Cristina also has an army of followers on social media where she started "in the most absurd way possible".

Cristina explains: "Two years ago, in August, all my friends were on holiday and I was counting ammunition at four in the afternoon. I jokingly recorded a video of me saying: look what I'm doing while you're all in the pool. I accidentally uploaded it to the gun shop's profile instead of my own and a few hours later it had thousands of views."

A few days later, she was handling hunting licences when she realised that she had a lot of work to do; most clients had left it "for the last minute, typical of the Spanish" and she would have to hurry to make the deadline. She recorded a second video explaining this anecdote and it went viral again. "My followers recommended that I upload more, to see if it was a coincidence or if it was really interesting," she adds.

Today Cristina has more than 65,000 followers on Facebook and 10,000 on Instagram. The most popular thing, without a doubt, is the content recorded in the workshop: "They love to see how I disassemble guns, for example. I show them how a gun shop is run, a business perspective they may not have seen," she says. Her videos have even led to a visitor from New York, who comes to the shop every time he visits Spain, among many others.

Cristina receives thousands of comments every day. Some call her "empowered" for being in a profession traditionally dominated by men - in fact, she doesn't know any other female gunsmiths in Spain. From time to time she comes up against sexist comments, especially in person. "Some people ask me where the boss is or say that he is going to disassemble the gun, not me. Fortunately, they are few and far between. I think I've had more obstacles because I'm young than because I'm a woman, because they think you don't have the knowledge you should have because of your age," she admits.

Because of the nature of her business, she is often in communication with the Guardia Civil. On the one hand, 'Intervención de armas' carries out numerous inspections, a practice that Cristina applauds. "I appreciate that it is controlled so that there are no problems," she admits. On occasion she has been asked questions related to an investigation, such as about the type of product a customer bought or a technical query. "We get along well with each other, we are a team," she adds.

On the darker side of the profession are those who seek to engage in illegal activities, such as buying goods without a licence, which is totally unfeasible. "There are those who say that another gun shop has sold them ammunition at exorbitant prices without asking for the papers. They offer you 200 euros for something worth 20 to see if you fall for it, but there is no need to make things complicated. It's not worth risking everything for 200 euros, even though many people find it tempting," Cristina says.

In addition to selling and repairing firearms, Cristina Orantes is passionate about shooting, "a very beautiful sport" that she highly recommends. "It helps you to concentrate, to breathe and to escape from everyday problems. There is a very good atmosphere in the competitions and we are happy for each other's successes," says the Granada native, who recalls that the shooting range in Las Gabias is "one of the best in Europe".

"For me guns are everything, from a hobby to an inheritance from my father, who had no land, but left us a lot of guns," says Cristina. She will continue with her shop, she hopes, until she retires.

What she likes most is providing solutions to clients like when "someone comes to me with a serious problem, such as blindness in one eye, and you have to find an alternative so that they can aim with the other eye. Or someone who has just retired and their dream has always been to get their firearms licence. You help them to prepare for the exam and get it. Finding these solutions satisfies me," confesses Cristina, Spain's most famous gunsmith, who will continue to raise awareness of the sector from her shop in Las Gabias.