It will be gathered from the following brief sketch that Spain has achieved distinction both as a manufactory and a storehouse of arms. Aragon, and, to a less marked extent, Castile, were always in the van where the improvement of armour was concerned; and although experts consider that Italy set the fashion in the craft during the Middle Ages, it is by no means certain that Barcelona did not, at some periods, assume the lead. Swords, as in the days of the Cæsars, continued to be exported to Italy from Catalonia through the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the traffic, curiously enough, being chiefly in the hands of that unwarlike race, the Jews.
But while arms and armour have ever been a study in the Peninsula which has engaged the closest attention of Kings, soldiers, and artificers, no distinct style, no essentially national type of armour was, or could be, evolved. Nor is this fact calculated to cause surprise, for it is obvious that there can be no Spanish school of armoury in the sense that there is a Spanish school of painting, or of music. Weapons and means of defence must vary according to periods rather than localities, and thus it follows that while the armour of one century may be easily distinguished from that of another, to differentiate between a German and a French suit of the same period is always a difficult, frequently an impossible, task. The warrior could not permit himself to be swayed by fanciful or patriotic prejudice in the fashion or make of his arms; his life depended on the stoutness and quality of his weapons, and he secured the best that his means could command wherever they were obtainable. If the enemy were possessed of stronger, more pliant, or better tempered weapons or accoutrements, the soldier had no choice but to learn the methods of his foeman. The secrets of improvements in the science of armoury could only be preserved in times of peace, for, once the weapons were used in the tented field, the riddle of their superiority was solved. The harness of a vanquished knight became, according to the laws of chivalry, the property of his conqueror. In this manner a constant interchange of arms and armour went on through the Iron Ages, and the equipment and methods of victorious and vanquished nations were sooner or later divulged and adopted.