Star Bonifacio Echeverria, S.A. was a manufacturer of small arms (principally handguns and sub-machineguns) in the Basque region of Spain from about 1905 until 1997. Company history Bonifacio Echeverria and the ancestry of Star The Eibar region has been a center of weapons development and manufacture for centuries, with "Spanish Steel" historically being a selling point with its reputation for quality and durability. When firearms came into being, Eibar retained its edge as a weapons manufacturing center. The oldest known ancestor of the Star lineage is José Cruz Echeverria, who made muzzle-loading firearms in the 19th century. His two sons, Julián and Bonifacio, entered the firearms business about 1905. Thanks to a curious mechanism in the Spanish patent law, local firms were until 1986 free to produce foreign designs protected abroad if they weren't produced in Spain. So the brothers started to make the model 1908 pistol, substantially an unlicensed clone of Mannlicher M1900 in 6.35 mm (.25 ACP) caliber. Around 1910 Julián left the business and Bonifacio expanded and began improving their current offering. The Model 1914 was released with much the same mechanism as the 1908, but with further improvements to the ergonomics, As is often the case with weapons makers, a government contract secured the success of the company. The firm was a sub-contractor to Gabilondo y Urresti in producing a version of the Gabilondo Ruby pistol for the French military during World War I. Additionally, Bonifacio Echeverria was directly contracted for a version of the 1914 Model pistol. The "Model 1 Militar" was a 7.65 mm (.32) caliber version of the Model 1914 designed for the French military, who referred to them as the Pistolet automatique, type Star. The beginnings of Star as a brand In 1919, Bonifacio formally registered the Star trade name, and all subsequent weapons were marked as such. Note that although some references say that the Basque and Spanish equivalents of Star are also registered (Izarra and Estrella), they seem to have never been marketed as such. The classic era Originally, Bonifacio had planned on producing a still more improved version of the model 1914, initially to meet a French follow-on contract for 50,000 pistols. However, the end of World War I led to the cancellation of the contract, and Echeverria decided that clones of the Colt M1911 were more commercially viable. Development moved rapidly from pistols that looked like Colts to