Baraja (playing cards)
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The Baraja (literally deck/pack of cards) is a Spanish set of playing cards closely resembling the common 52-card Anglo-American deck, but is usually made up of only 48 cards. Often the eights and nines are omitted to create a 40-card deck. It is still possible to find them in a normal 52-card Anglo-American deck style. It consists of four suits of twelve cards and two jokers (called comodines).
The ten, eleven, and twelve have pictures and values similar to the jack, queen, and king in an Anglo-French deck. They are the sota, which is similar to the jack and generally depicts a page or prince, the caballo (knight), and the rey (king) respectively. The suits are bastos (clubs), oros (literally "golds", that is, golden coins), copas (cups) and espadas (swords).
It is an ancient deck that existed in Spain since between the 1300-1500s. They closely resemble the suits of Latin suited Tarot decks. In fact, the Baraja, like the tarot, are used for both game playing and cartomancy. 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. Among other places, the Baraja have appeared in One Hundred Years of Solitude and other Hispanic and Latin American literature (eg. Viaje a la Alcarria by Cervantes).
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