Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian McCollum
And today we're taking a look at an interesting Spanish copy of the Mannlicher
1901 / 05
Automatic pistol this is called the La Lira and they were manufactured by a Spanish company called Garate
Anitua y Cia in I don't know the exact date
but sometime between approximately 1901 and 1905 and
these really are pretty much an exact mechanical copy of the Mannlicher pistol with one major exception and that is
They have detachable magazines where the Mannlicher all the versions of the Mannlicher like this used a stripper clip feed with a fixed magazine
in the grip now these were able to be produced legally in Spain because of one of the peculiarities of
Spanish patent law namely you couldn't if you registered a patent in Spain you had to actually
manufacture that product in Spain or else your your patent didn't have any legal force, so
Spanish small Spanish gun companies in Eibar like Garate Anitua we're able to manufacture
complete knock-offs exact copies of major
European gun maker designs without any patent infringement issues because none of those major companies like Mauser or FN?
Or steyr actually set up manufacturing
Facilities in Spain. So in fact in most cases
They didn't even bother registering patents in Spain because the patents wouldn't have had any legal force anyway
The Mannlicher automatic pistol is really a pretty distinctive gun in its own
right
and this is a model of 1901 Mannlicher and here we have a really nice condition la Lira and you can obviously
See the similarities
The hammer mechanisms are the same
The sights are not quite the same
Although this is back here
The 1901 Mannlicher, in 1905 Mannlicher would move his rear sight to the back of the slide here
Which is how the Lira has been done
Disassembly is the same with this side plate coming off from the bottom. We'll take a look at that in a moment
It really just is this magazine that makes the Lira distinctive now. There's also an interesting
magazine release here
instead of having the magazine release built into the frame
The magazine release is actually built into each individual magazine. So I pull this catch forward and then I can pull the magazine out
There's just a hole in the back of the frame to hold that that latch
the Lira magazines have this kind of neat distinctive curve to them to fit the really nice grip of the gun and
the liras are also manufactured in 765 browning or 32 ACP as opposed to the Mannlichers, which are in
763 Mannlicher which is a proprietary cartridge
So that cartridge would really not have ever been found in Spain
32 ACP was a pretty popular cartridge in Spain as well as the rest of the world. So it makes sense that
Garate Anitua would have made these guns in 32 Auto
While I've got both of these here. I should also point out that this is the small version of the Mannlicher
They did make a full-size service pistol Mannlicher as well
The lira was only ever made as kind of as a pocket-sized gun this rather small one
Mechanically, the lira is just a simple blowback pistol
So once the hammer is cocked the only thing holding this slide back is mass and spring tension now
The Mannlicher is a slightly more complex gun on
the Mannlicher we actually have a little tooth right here that's being pushed up into the slide and
Before the slide can open it has two cam this piece down
So right there you can see this tooth come down
It locks up into the slide and that gives it just a little bit of delay before it opens
If we look at the inside of the lira and by the way
We do this by pushing this latch up and then pulling the side plate forward
Right there
So that's your your basic disassembly right? There is just pulling this off
now
This is where that delaying tooth was on the Mannlicher, And on the Lira, There's nothing there
That piece has been replaced with one that just holds the spring in place
You can also take a look at our markings here. There are two different versions of markings that we'll see on these
Of the three guns that are here two of them are marked this way, and that is with the caliber browning
765 or 32 acp on one side of the slide
and
Sistema La "Lira" on the other side along with a trademark registration
mark
there is a difference between a trademark and a patent and
Trademarks were something that were very commonly applied for and used in the Spanish gun trade
The trademark is for basically the brand name
So if you wanted to call your gun the model of 1916 or the Liberty or the Venus or the Lira
What you would do is apply and get register that trademark and then only you would be allowed to use it that has no
relation to the actual
mechanical system of the gun or of anything else you could trademark sewing machines or cars or or
anything else that you wanted a brand name on and
Then lastly we have a manufacturer's mark on the top of the barrel and it's really tiny, but it says Garate Anitua
y compañía or y C, Eibar
espana
Comparing the parts on the Steyr made Mannlicher here and the Spanish made La Lira
You can see that mechanically this system is basically identical
however, in terms of production quality the Steyr is definitely better for example this flat spring has
these this lump or
Extension machined directly into it. It has a little bit of an extension right here on the Lira
We just have a flat metal spring when they needed to hold it down from the top of the slide
they just added an extra chunk of steel as a separate part the contouring on these various parts in here and here is
Just a far higher standard than you have on the Spanish gun
We have two different liras here that appear that are well basically identical but they do have a few different traits to them
One is in the magazine, and we also have a difference in the markings
So this one has that para cartucho browning 765 on the side plate
It has this sort of nonsense up on the slide. I have no idea what that is, but it's not a factory marking
It also has on the opposite side sistema la Lira here on the side plate
It's pretty worn there now
This has also been serialized 32 that seems to have probably been done outside the factory
It certainly is the only one I've seen like this that is numbered in that way
The rest of them don't have serial numbers. So it's a little bit odd that this one would and such a low number
Now the other difference in this particular pistol is that it has a standard heel
magazine release in addition to the magazine mounted magazine catch
So this one really has both systems going and what you do is push
What you do is push the button in and we can then pull the magazine this far and then you pull the latch forward
And then you can take the magazine out
There is a follower button on this side to aid with loading and
There's a recess in the frame to allow space for it
And of course being Spanish, the preferred fancy style would be Damascening so we actually have a Damascene version of the Lira
Right here to take a look at
This gun would have been if it was ordered as a Damascened gun
It would have been taken out of the production line before it was completely finished
Before it was blued and handed off to an artist in Eibar to do the Damascening
Now this is a little bit unusual in that this side plate doesn't match
the finish doesn't doesn't appear to match with the rest of the gun and
Given the decoration that's been done to the rest of the gun. It seems like the side plate here should have been Damascened
so most likely
The original was Damascene and then it was damaged or lost or somehow had to be replaced and it was replaced with a plain one
we do also have a couple mechanical differences between this Damascened example and
The others you'll note that there is a screw on the top of the slide here
Which does not exist on the Damascened one that screw is how the safety catch is held in place and on this one
We instead have a retention feature there on the side
by the way, these are single action pistols and what the safety does is simply snap down and
Block the hammer from going far enough forward to hit the firing pin
So that's with the safety engaged it just doesn't it the firing pin it's a very simple safety system
You can also see that the Damascened gun has a semicircular front sight where the other two have
fin-style of front sights
So these are just a number of a number of small changes that were made as the production changed
You'll notice also the Damascene gun has these black plastic grips as opposed to wood
Sorry actually hard rubber and they have
this cool little you know logo of the Lira pistol kind of reminiscent of the 1900 browning there and
then the
Registered trademark logo at the bottom of the grip. So some guns had rubber grips
Some guns had wood grips couple different versions of front sight
Changes to the safety and so on one other interesting will tidbit of these Julian Echeverria
who was the younger brother of Bonifacio Echeverria who ultimately
founded the star company
He actually ended up going to work as a gunsmith for Garate y Anitua at one point during his career
in fact in the early 1900s and
After working there, he got interested in firearms design and he actually came up with a design for a pistol
That is basically a copy of the La Lira that was marketed by Star in 1906 and 1908
It's a yet smaller little pockets really pocket-sized version like this
So interestingly Star ended up marketing a copy of a copy in fact
We don't know in total how many of these were manufactured but we can kind of take a guess
If we compare the the regularity with which they are found to the Mannlicher
well Mannlicher made about 12,000 1901 and 1905 pistols and
These La Lira pistols are way scarcer to find there may be one in five
Probably one in ten as many of these that you'll find on the market or in collections compared to Mannlichers
So I think it's definitely safe to say that there were not more than about a thousand La Liras manufactured
Probably more like 500 or even less than that. So they're really very scarce pistols today, which is a bit unusual because
The detachable magazine does really seem to be a nice improvement over Mannlicher's system
The downside of course is the manufacturing quality of these is really nothing like what steyr was doing on the Mannlicher pistols
At any rate. This is probably the most La liras you will ever see in one place
It was very cool to be able to put them together here and show you several of the different minor
Variations that are in there and of course a gold Damascene one
How cool is that?
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To you. Thanks for watching