"Ribbons hold a distinguished place among the manufactured articles of Spain. Some few are woven at Jaen, Granada, and Cordova; but more at Talavera. Cadiz has but twenty ribbon-looms, Manresa five hundred, Mataró eighty, Vich twenty-two, Requeña two hundred, Valencia four hundred, Murcia twelve hundred, and Barcelona nearly three thousand. These looms are not in factories, but individually dispersed. The Spanish ribbons are in general thin and flimsy, have little lustre, and their colours are neither brilliant nor permanent. Ribbons are made of floss-silk at Toledo, where there are about twelve looms, and at Manresa, where there is a greater number.[26] [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. [Illustration: IX A _CHARRA_ OR PEASANT WOMAN (_Salamanca, A.D. 1777_)]