Le Brong

About the Le Brong

The Le Brong is a small .25 ACP (6.35mm Browning) striker-fired blowback vest-pocket semi-automatic pistol produced in Eibar, Spain, by the firm Crucelegui Hermanos in the early 20th century. Like the great majority of Eibar trade-name pocket guns of the period, it is a close copy of John Browning's FN Model 1906 vest-pocket automatic, feeding from a six-round detachable box magazine through a roughly 54mm barrel and using a simple blowback action with a concealed striker. 'Le Brong' was one of several romantic-sounding trade names — alongside Puppy, Velo-Mith, Bron-Sport, Brong-Petit and C.H. — that Crucelegui Hermanos applied to its small handguns to make inexpensive locally made arms more attractive to buyers. Build quality was modest, typical of the low-cost cottage gunmaking that flourished around Eibar before the Spanish Civil War.

The Le Brong belongs to the flood of cheap Spanish vest-pocket automatics that poured out of Eibar in the early 1900s, when lax patent enforcement let local workshops freely copy John Browning's pocket pistols. Sold under a string of catchy trade names by Crucelegui Hermanos, guns like the Le Brong armed shopkeepers and travellers across Europe as discreet, last-ditch self-defense pieces.

Le Brong specifications

'Le Brong' is a Crucelegui Hermanos trade name rather than a formal model designation; the firm reused several near-interchangeable brand names (Puppy, Velo-Mith, Bron-Sport, Brong-Petit, C.H.) across small pistols and revolvers, so individual specimens vary in detail. The .25 ACP automatic described here follows the FN/Browning 1906 vest-pocket pattern; specifications are estimated from that pattern as no detailed factory data survives. No reliable total-production figure is recorded.