The Romeros' guitar virtuosity is more than enough to account for their fame, but it doesn't hurt that the quartet also has a story dramatic enough for the movies. There's true love, great art and mortal danger, and a risky escape to freedom. You can almost hear some executive pitching the script: "Think 'Sound of Music' with a Spanish accent! Only instead of singers, guitars!"

	The Romeros Where and When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Manchester Craftsmen's Guild; 3 p.m. Sunday, Synod Hall Tickets: $35; 412-394-3353 Workshop: Pepe Romero will give a guitar workshop at 6 p.m. today at Duquesne University School of Music Room 307; tickets are $35. Call 412-396--5486. A Guitar Society of Fine Art fund-raising dinner with the Romeros will take place at 5:30 p.m. Sunday at City View Cafe, Duquesne University Union, 6th Floor; tickets $50. Call 412-394-3353.

Their story continues with performances Saturday and Sunday by Pepe, Celin, Celino and Lito in Pittsburgh, sponsored by the Guitar Society of Fine Art. Their story began, if you want to put a date to it, in Cuba in 1913 with the birth of Celedonio Romero, who would become one of the great guitarists of the 20th century.

Celedonio's parents took the family back to their native Spain when he was still a child, and there he studied composition at the conservatory in Malaga. On his own, he learned guitar. His son Pepe, who leads the current edition of the Romeros, picks up the tale, speaking on the phone from the family's rambling home overlooking the sea near San Diego.

"He was completely self-taught," Pepe says in his mellifluous Spanish accent, "to the point that when he went to the conservatory the guitar teacher did not want to accept him because he already could play much better than he could."

Celedonio was befriended by two students of Francisco Tarrega, the great Spanish guitar teacher and composer, and they passed along much of Tarrega's approach in an informal way. Building on that foundation, Celedonio came up with his own innovations.

"The particular thing that I would attribute as very significant to my father is the production of a very big sound for the guitar," Pepe says, "of setting the string into vibration in a very clean and clear manner."

Celedonio also honed the use of rasgueado, the flashy strumming that is a staple of flamenco -- a technique Pepe says many classical guitarists have neglected.

The young Celedonio met and married Angelita, an actress, singer and castanet "virtuoso," as described by the composer Joaquin Rodrigo. She would be Celedonio's companion and inspiration from the 1930s until his death.

In 1936, civil war came to Spain, with the leftist-backed government pitted against Franco's fascists. The oldest of the couple's three sons, Celin, was born on Nov. 28, 1936, in the midst of an air attack on Malaga by German bombers of the Condor Legion, which Hitler sent to Franco's aid.

Not long after, Malaga fell to Franco. As was the case all over Spain, artists and intellectuals were imprisoned, including Celedonio. His jail term was brief, but another punishment followed: He was not allowed to leave Spain, and his career stagnated.

Pepe was born in 1944, and the youngest son, Angel, in 1948. All three sons were taught guitar by their father.

In 1957, the family received permission to visit an aunt in Portugal. Instead of returning to Spain, they fled to California. They couldn't bring any money or possessions, says Pepe, who was 13 at the time.

Although he came of age in Southern California on the crest of the freewheeling '60s, Pepe was never tempted to play folk-rock or acid-rock or surf music.

"I always loved the guitar -- classical guitar, flamenco, the classical music. It was never something that was forced on any one of us, and we did it completely out of love and inspiration. And I never did think of rebelling against it or of doing anything else.

"I think once you find what you are meant to do in this life and you are lucky enough to do it, you live in a state of thanksgiving that you have that which not everybody has."

At first the family struggled; they advertised their guitar school with Pepe's hand-lettered sign. But things changed almost overnight in 1960, when he and his three sons took to the stage as Los Romeros, practically inventing the classical guitar quartet. Recordings and world tours followed, from Carnegie Hall to the Vatican to "The Ed Sullivan Show."

The group started with transcriptions of pieces by Bach and Vivaldi; soon composers including Rodrigo, Federico Torroba and Celedonio himself were writing specifically for the group's guitars.

As classical musicians, the Romeros perform works from many countries, but make no mistake, it is Spanish music that is closest to their hearts. Most of their repertoire is by Spaniards from Albeniz, Granados and Turina to the contemporary composer Lorenzo Palomo, and most of it is informed by flamenco, which Pepe describes as "the folk and traditional music of southern Spain, of Andalucia. And it's not only the music, but it's a certain poetry, it's a way of being, of living. It's an improvised art."

A Romeros concert has "everything but the bullfight," as one reviewer described it, and typically closes with a fiery, improvised flamenco piece.

In 1990, Angel left the Romeros to perform as a soloist and a conductor. Celin's son Celino stepped in. In 1996, when Celedonio died, his chair was filled by Angel's son Lito. Angelita died in 1999.

All the Romero parents, children and grandchildren live within 20 minutes' drive of the home Celedonio and Angelita built in 1974. Celin and Pepe and their families still live in the house. Pepe Jr. is a guitar maker who works there.

"I'm just holding his latest instrument in my hand," says his dad. "I was practicing just as you called. He has just built a magnificent, magnificent instrument. He has his shop downstairs, and just as I am talking to you he's having his lunch in front of me. It's an incredible pleasure to have him building instruments right here, and I'm very frequently going into his shop and looking at what he's doing."

The Romeros have traveled frequently to post-Franco Spain; the family was knighted by the Spanish crown, and they were close to the late Rodrigo, who composed the world's most famous guitar concerto, the Aranjuez. Asked if he knows anyone who was killed or hurt in the Madrid bombings last month, Romero says simply, "Yes, I did."

As a musician from a country whose music is suffused with both Arab and Western influence, does he think music can somehow make a troubled world a little better?

"Well, the music is a cry for peace, a cry for unity, a cry for love. And I think that I wish all politicians would spend some time listening to music. And that they should be touched by the miracle that music can bring.

"I think the world is too much ruled by avarice, and we need to think of the oneness of us all. And that the pain of each nation and the pain of each human life that is lost, independent of what the religious belief or the nationality, is the pain for all of us to bear. Humanity has to get a hold of itself."