[24] The art of weaving silk appears to have found its way into Barcelona comparatively late, for the veil-makers did not form a guild of their own till a.d. 1553, the velvet-makers till 1548, the silk-twisters till 1619, and the dyers of silk till 1624.

[25] Brocade (Spanish brocado or brocato) may be generally described as a silk-stuff woven with devices or raised figures in gold and silver thread, or either of these metals separately (Plate [viii].). This costly fabric, which may be said to have superseded the earlier kinds of cloth of gold, was greatly in vogue in older Spain, especially throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. It is constantly referred to by her writers (“No siendo nueva la que prohibe las telas de oro, los brocados, y tabies.”—Fernandez Navarrete; Conservacion de Monarquías, p. 231), and denounced by her priests (Fray Luis de León, “Y ha de venir la tela de no sé donde, y el brocado de mas altos, y el ambar que bañe el guante”), or in the pragmatics of her kings (e.g. that of September 2nd, 1494, and of 1611: “Está prohibido todo género de colgaduras, tapicerias sillas, coches, y literas de brocados, telas de oro ó plata…. Asi mismo se prohiben bordaduras en el campo de los doseles y camas; pero no en las cenefas, que podrán llevar alamares, y fluecos de oro, ó plata, ó brocado”).

Brocade was made in Spain at Toledo, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia and elsewhere, but as a rule it could not be compared in quality with that of Genoa or Venice. A cheaper, though showy and attractive modification of brocade was brocatel, in which the silk was mixed with common thread or flax. According to the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy, this commoner fabric was used for hangings for churches, halls, beds, etc., and a document of 1680 tells us that the price of brocatel made at Granada, and containing two colours, was twenty-two reales the yard.

[26] Towards the nineteenth century, ribbon was a great deal worn upon, or together with, the regional costumes of the Spanish women; for instance, on the gala bodice or cotilla of the hortelana of Valencia, who further used it to make fast her alpargatas or sandals, described in the manuscript account attached to Pigal's plates as “espèce de cothurnes, attachés avec des rubans en soie ou fil bleu ou rouge.” The same fabric served the peasant woman of Carthagena for securing the sleeves of her gala camisole, for lacing the bodice of the woman of Iviza, and in the other Balearic Islands, for tying the rebocillo or rebociño beneath the chin. Also it was with ribbon that the servant-girls of Granada suspended a cross round their necks, that the charra of Salamanca (Plate [ix].) trimmed her hat, that the women of Madrid, La Mancha, and Andalusia bound up their knots of hair (moños con cinta), and that, in some localities, even ladies of the highest class secured their shoes about the lower leg and ankle.

[CLOTHS AND WOOLLENS]

Although the history of Spanish cloths and woollens is not of great importance, I think it well to briefly sketch their history. Sails and other fabrics of the coarsest kind are said to have been made, almost in prehistoric times, at Sætabi (the modern Játiva) and at Saguntum (Murviedro). From the thirteenth century cloths of good quality were made at Barcelona, Lerida, San Daniel, Bañolas, Valls, and other towns of Cataluña. A privilege of Alfonso the Learned, dated May 18th, 1283, contains the following technical disposition relative to the cloth-looms of the city of Soria: “Que la trenza cuando sea ordida que haya 88 varas, que pese una aranzada é 5 libras de estambre; é cualquier que la fallare menor, que peche 5 sueldos. Que todos los tejedores é tejedoras de la dicha cibdad é de su tierra, que pongan en las telas de lino 42 linnuelos é en las de estopazo 32 linnuelos; é en las de marga é de sayal 32 linnuelos.”

Segovia was another ancient centre of this manufacture, which Larruga considers to have been transferred hither upon the extinction of the factories of Cameros, Burgos, and Palencia. However this may be, the fuero of Sepúlveda, signed by Alfonso the Sixth, tells us that clothworks existed here as early as the eleventh century. Towards the end of the fourteenth, when Catherine of Lancaster was married to the Infante Don Enrique, the English princess brought over, as part of her dowry, a flock of merino sheep. These are believed to have pastured near Segovia—a city where Catherine made her home for many years. In any case, Segovian cloths improved considerably from about this time, and by the reigns of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, when thirty-four thousand persons were employed in the manufacture and twenty-five thousand pieces of cloth were produced annually, were thought (especially the baizes and the serges) to be unsurpassed in Europe.[27] Sovereigns, including Charles the Second and Charles the Fifth of Spain, and Henry the Eighth of England, were among the patrons of these fabrics, while as late as the year 1700 the Franciscan friars engaged in redeeming captives from the Turks, reported that “at Constantinople, whither they had carried Segovian cloths as presents to the principal rulers of that country, those cloths were spoken of in terms of high approval.”

Early in the seventeenth century, and owing to a series of causes such as impertinent or improvident legislation, heavy taxes, and the importation of foreign cloths, the trade showed symptoms of decay.[28] Bertaut de Rouen wrote in 1659, referring to the Spanish character at this time: “Bien souvent le pain leur manque, comme j'ay veu dans Almagro, petite ville située dans le meilleur pays d'Andalousie, et dans Segovie, qui est une des grandes villes d'Espagne, et où il y avoit autrefois des plus riches marchands à cause des draps et des chapeaux que l'on y faisoit, qui a esté longtemps le sejour des Roys de Castille, et qui n'est qu'environ à douze ou quatorze lieuës de Madrid, où il n'y avoit point de pain dans toute la ville le jour que j'y arrivay, et il n'y en eut qu'à quatre heures après midy, que l'on le distribua par ordre du Corregidor, aussi bien qu'à Almagro.”

The rise, decay, and subsequent revival of the Spanish cloth industries, and particularly the Segovian, are well described by Laborde, Bourgoing, and Townsend. According to the first of these authorities, “at so early a period as 1629 the merchants (of Segovia) complained that there was every year a reduction in the fabrication of cloth, to the amount of five thousand five hundred pieces; and that there resulted from this deficiency an annual loss of 2,424,818 ducats and 2 reals, or about £274,000 sterling. In the eighteenth century it appeared, from the observations of the Economical Society, that the fabrication of stuffs and cloths employed but one hundred and twenty looms, in which only four thousand three hundred and eighteen quintals of washed wool were consumed.

“About forty years ago these manufactures began to revive, the looms were multiplied, and the consumption of wool considerably augmented. A single individual, Don Lorenzo Ortiz, has for some years accelerated their progress. In 1790 there was an addition of sixty-three looms, which employed eight or nine hundred quintals of wool, and afforded occupation to two thousand four hundred manufacturers.”