Francisco de Asís Tárrega y Eixea (21 November 1852 – 15 December 1909) was a Spanish composer and classical guitarist of the late Romantic period.

Fearing that his son might lose his sight completely, his father moved the family to Castellón de la Plana to attend music classes because as a musician he would be able to earn a living, even if blind.

Although Tárrega was only ten years old, he ran away and tried to start a musical career on his own by playing in coffee houses and restaurants in Barcelona.

For a time, he played with other musicians at local engagements to earn money, but eventually he returned home to help his family.

At the conservatory, Tárrega studied composition under Emilio Arrieta who convinced him to focus on guitar and abandon the idea of a career with the piano.

By the end of the 1870s, Tárrega was teaching the guitar (Emilio Pujol, Miguel Llobet, and Daniel Fortea were pupils of his) and giving regular concerts.

In 1881, Tárrega played in the Opera Theatre in Lyon and then the Paris Odeon, in the bicentenary of the death of Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

To enlarge his guitar repertory and to make use of his considerable knowledge of keyboard music, he soon began transcribing piano works of Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn and others.

On a concert tour in Valencia shortly afterward, Tárrega met the wealthy Concepción Gómez de Jacoby, who became a valuable patron to him.

He later dedicated a revised published version of this piece to Alfred Cottin, the French guitarist he had met in Paris while participating in a concert on a visit accompanied and almost certainly sponsored by Gómez de Jacoby.

One of his late students, Josefina Robledo Gallego, promoted Tárrega's style on her concert tours to South America and is credited with "becoming the main disseminator of the Tàrrega school in Brazil.

His favored genres were character pieces (several with Spanish, Moorish and Arabic allusions) including preludes, etudes, caprices, serenades, and dances.

In 2015, the Italian violist Marco Misciagna published his arrangements for solo viola of the Tango, Capricho árabe and Recuerdos de la Alhambra.