my playing card collection
The box that goes around the figure has a mark to distinguish the suit without showing all of your cards: The cups have one interruption, the swords two, the clubs three, and the gold none. This mark is called "la pinta" and gave rise to the expression: le conocí por la pinta ("I knew him by his markings").
The Baraja have been widely considered to be part of the occult in many Latin- American countries, yet they continue to be used widely for card games and gambling, especially in Spain, which does not use the Anglo-French deck. Among other places, the Baraja have appeared in One Hundred Years of Solitude and other Hispanic and Latin American literature. The Spanish deck is used not only in Spain, but also in other countries where Spain maintained an influence (e.g., Mexico, Chile, Argentina and most of Hispanic America, the Philippines and Puerto Rico) 1. Among the games played with this deck are: el mus (a very popular and highly regarded vying game of Basque origin), la brisca, la pocha, el tute (with many variations), el guiñote, la escoba del quince (a trick-taking game), el julepe, el cinquillo, las siete y media, la mona, el truc (or truco), el cuajo (a matching game from the Philippines), el jamón, el tonto, el hijoputa, el mentiroso, el cuco, las parejas and las cuarenta (a fishing game, the national card game of Ecuador). In Spain, games of Anglo-American origin such as poker and blackjack are played with the international 52-card deck, which is called a baraja de poker.
Spanish Suits
The traditional Spanish deck (referred to as baraja española in Spanish) uses Latin suit symbols. Being a Latin-suited deck (like the Italian deck), it is organized into four palos (suits) that closely match those of the Italian-suited Tarot deck: oros ("golds" or coins), copas (beakers or cups), espadas (swords) and bastos (batons or clubs). Certain decks include two "comodines" (jokers) as well.
The cards (cartas in Spanish) are all numbered, but unlike in the standard Anglo-French deck, the card numbered 10 is the first of the court cards (instead of a card depicting ten coins/cup /swords/batons); so each suit has only twelve cards. The three court or face cards in each suit are as follows: la sota ("the knave" or jack, numbered 10 and equivalent to the Anglo-French ard J), el caballo ("the horse", horseman, knight or cavalier, numbered 11 and used instead of the Anglo-French card Q, and finally el rey ("the king", numbered 12 and equivalent to the Anglo-French card K). However, most Spanish games involve forty-card decks, with the 8s and 9s removed, similar to the standard Italian deck.