Hispanitas: The Spanish House Behind Estela's Founding Collection
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Every brand in this collection had to earn its place. Hispanitas is the one that started it.
When I began building Estela, I was looking for a very specific thing — footwear that met the standards I'd been trained to apply to fine jewellery over twenty years of buying diamonds. Craftsmanship you can see under a loupe. Materials that don't disappoint on closer inspection. Design that will still look considered in ten years.
Hispanitas was the first brand I found that met all three without asking me to compromise on the fourth thing, which is that a woman actually has to walk in them.
Here is the story behind them.
A hundred years, four generations
The Hispanitas name is only about thirty-five years old. The family behind it has been making shoes for a century.
It begins in 1925, when Alfonso Chico de Guzmán started a small shoemaking business called Alfama in the Alicante region of Spain — a modest operation, making shoes in the years before the Spanish Civil War.
His son Francisco carried it forward. In 1959 he began a new venture making shoes by hand, and developed an idea for a tubular construction that produced one of the family's first signature models — the kiowas. In 1960 he launched a new label, Emboga, and created the Ye-Yemoc moccasin, which became something of an icon.
The third generation arrived in 1975, when Francisco's son Luis joined the family business. Luis had trained in design and pattern-making at Ars Sutoria in Milan — the most respected footwear design school in Europe — and came home to run the company alongside his father. His brother Carlos joined in 1986, and together they began building distribution across the Iberian peninsula, then internationally, showing at the major European trade fairs by the end of the decade.
Today the business is run by the third and fourth generations of the same family.
The night the brand got its name
This is my favourite part, and it's the reason I think Hispanitas belongs in a collection like ours.
By the late eighties, the family's bestselling shoe was a ballet flat. In the Spanish trade, that style was known as a francesita — "the little French one" — because the shape had come from France, and France was where fashionable shoes were understood to come from.
One summer night in 1989, Francisco sat down with Luis and Carlos to talk about giving their product a proper brand name. His idea was simple and slightly defiant: let's give our shoes a real Spanish name. Let's call them Hispanitas.
The little French ones became the little Spanish ones. The brand launched in 1990.
I love that story because it is exactly the argument Estela exists to make. Spain has spent decades being treated as the quiet neighbour to Italian and French fashion, while producing footwear that is every bit as well made — and, in my experience, considerably more wearable. Hispanitas planted a flag on that in 1989 and has never moved it.
In 2015, to mark twenty-five years, they reissued their very first model, the 177 moccasin. A brand that goes back to its own first shoe rather than chasing a trend tells you something about how it thinks.
Where and how they're made
Hispanitas manufactures the majority of its collections in Spain, with a smaller portion made in Portugal. The company works with a group of factories located close to its base in the Alicante province — deliberately keeping production local rather than moving it offshore, which is genuinely unusual at this price point.
Alicante is not an accident of geography. The Vinalopó valley — Elda, Petrer, Elche — has been the centre of Spanish footwear for over a century, and the depth of skill in those towns is why so many of the brands I buy come from within about forty kilometres of each other.
Hispanitas also publishes a fairly detailed sustainability position: recycled and recycled-content materials across parts of the range, removable inner soles made largely from recycled PU, chrome-free linings on some models, and recycled packaging. I'd encourage you to read their own statements on it rather than take mine — but it's a considered programme rather than a line on a website, and that mattered to me when I chose them.
What they're like to wear
Craft history is lovely. Comfort is what makes you buy the second pair.
The thing that consistently surprises customers about Hispanitas is that the comfort isn't bolted on — it's designed in. The removable inner sole in most styles is a small detail with a big consequence: if you wear orthotics, you can take it out and drop yours in without ruining the fit of the shoe. Very few brands at this level allow for that.
The design language sits somewhere I find genuinely rare: soft, interesting colour, a distinctive detail on nearly every style, but never so loud that the shoe wears you. Hispanitas describes its customer as a woman with a strong personality and an independent outlook, designed for across age groups rather than at one of them. That's marketing language, but in this case it's accurate — I've sold the same style to a 32-year-old and a 68-year-old in the same week.
Explore the full Hispanitas collection →
And if you'd like to see what else has come out of that same corner of Alicante, Joni has just landed — a family house in Elda that has been making shoes by hand since 1956.
Frequently asked questions
Where are Hispanitas shoes made? Hispanitas manufactures most of its footwear in Spain, with a smaller proportion produced in Portugal. The company is based in the Alicante province and works with factories located nearby, supporting the region's long-standing footwear industry.
Who owns Hispanitas? Hispanitas is family-owned. It grew out of a shoemaking business started by Alfonso Chico de Guzmán in 1925 and is run today by the third and fourth generations of the same family.
What does the name Hispanitas mean? The name was coined in 1989 by Francisco Chico de Guzmán. The family's bestselling ballet flats were known in the trade as francesitas, or "little French ones". He proposed giving them a Spanish name instead — Hispanitas. The brand launched the following year.
Are Hispanitas shoes comfortable? Comfort is one of the brand's defining characteristics, built into the construction rather than added afterwards. Most styles feature a removable inner sole, which also makes them a practical option if you wear orthotic inserts.
Are Hispanitas shoes true to size? Hispanitas run true to European standard shoe sizing.
Where can I buy Hispanitas shoes in Australia? Estela stocks a curated selection of Hispanitas styles, chosen by hand and shipped across Australia. Browse the Hispanitas collection here.
Hispanitas is where Estela began. Shop the collection →