Good evening, gentlemen!
A spanish pistol of WWI era: Gabilondo and Urresti Ruby.
Based in a previous spanish design Esperanza y Unceta Victory, which was itself a version of the Browning Model 1903. It was a rather compact (17 cms long, or slightly less; but some were a little longer: the length varies from 16.5 to 18 cms) blowback pistol chambered for the 7,65x17 (.32 ACP) cartridge, with a 9 round magazine.
In 1915, Gabilondo presented the pistol to the french military, and it was accepted for service as Pistolet Automatique de 7.65 mm genre "Ruby". The pistol made by Gabilondo y Urresti (later LLama) was well made, and well finished, but this basque factory was very little (less than 10 employees), so the french contract of 10,000 pistols per month (later 30,000 and even 50,000 handguns monthly!!!) quickly overhelmed the production line, and they were forced to sub-contract 4 basque factories. Later in the war, the french goverment contract directly with other spanish gun-makers, and the quality dropped subsequently. In conclusion, more than 40 gun-makers (mainly in the Basque Country) made the astonishing amount of more than a million pistols! But many of them were so different that were inable to share magazines! In french service it was used by machine-gun gunners, drivers and second line troops, but was also privately bought by line infantrymen as last resource weapon in trench warfare. Here are shown only 3 different versions of the Ruby pistol, but the variations in dimensions, finish, grips, cocking grooves, triggers, etc are countless.
After the war, Gabilondo perfected the gun (even some were made as full automatic weapons), and a pistol with a 22 round magazine was commerced as the Ruby Plus Ultra, and was well sold in China and Japan (I think that the pistol in the well known photograph of a kamikaze pilot tying an hachimaki to his head, is a Plus Ultra). Cheers.
. But in the argentinian model, the paved is faded, and the color is lighter:
