see "Extinct Portuguese pattern" below). Each card has an outline frame 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"). La pinta first appeared around the mid-17th century. Like the Italian-suited tarot, the deck is used for both game playing and cartomancy. The Spanish deck has 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. The three face cards of each suit have pictures similar to the jack, queen, and king in the French deck, and rank identically. They are the sota, which is similar to the jack/knave and generally depicts a page or squire, the caballo (knight, literally "horse"), and the rey (king) respectively. There are instances of historical decks having both caballo and reina (queen), the caballo being of lower value than queen. These decks have no numbers in the figure values, not even letters as in the French deck. Reversible face cards exist but are not popular. It is also possible to find 52-card French decks with Spanish pictures. These have English corner indices which means the Knight will have the Queen's "Q" index. Historically, Spain was split into several independent states. Even after these states began sharing the same monarchy, they maintained their own separate parliaments, laws, and taxes for several centuries. In the 16th century, Spain became the first country to tax playing cards. The various regions and states kept track of the taxes they were owed by requiring producers, who were often monopolies (estanco), to conform to a regional pattern for cards sold locally. Known regional patterns include the Seville, Madrid, Toledo, Navarre and Valencia patterns. There were also export patterns, possibly including the little known Toulouse/Girona pattern or the "Dragon cards" (see below). Spain and France exported cards to each other, which explains why the kings and jacks in French-suited face cards resemble their Spanish counterparts, notably the standing kings. There was some deliberate copying; the king of coins from the Seville and Franco-Spanish patterns is near identical to the king of hearts in the French-suited Rouen pattern, which was exported to England and