By the beginning of the 20th century, the diversity in Spanish regional dress conformed to a cultural-ethnographic heritage which also involved dance and pastimes; their historicity is hard to assess. For how long have Galician villagers worn their traditional waistcoats? For how long have costumes or adornments been worn or handed down (possibly, but not necessarily always, as wedding dresses and parts of bridal dowries) by the women of various regions, such as the Andalusian flamenco flounces, fans, and mantillas?

18th- and 19th-century European travellers who were struck by Spain’s exotic qualities quickly took notice of the clothing of Granada, often characterized in terms of its “Moorish” features. Sartorial patterns were often linked to a specific region, even though they might be found elsewhere as well: leaving one eye uncovered was seen as part of Granada’s Muslim tradition, while women’s tapada head coverings could be found across Castile. Were the cloth on the shoulder and the hemp rope-soled sandal a unique identifier of the Murcian or the Andalusian? Were the zaraguelles (baggy trousers traditionally worn in Valencia and Murcia) restricted to the east coast? Was the knotted handkerchief worn on the head specific to Navarra or Aragon?

While regions had their own characteristic hats or headdress, European dress was also imitated or invoked – witness the Hungarian or Polish references in Henry Stokes’s Delineations of the most remarkable costumes of the different provinces of Spain and also of the military uniforms, bull fights, national dances of the Spaniards (1823).

Transregional garments remaining in use until the end of the 19th century included the full-length guardapiés petticoat, apron or pinafore, mantilla (a lace or silk shawl or veil worn over the head and shoulders), and headscarf. While court dress adopted French models in the course of the 18th century, earlier native patterns were kept alive by bullfighters, majas and majos (fashionable young men and women of Madrid or Andalusia), and bandits. Some notions of a national standard were advanced in the climate of the late Enlightenment: an anonymous (and not very influential) Discurso sobre el lujo de las señoras y proyecto de un traje nacional (1788) listed, in descending order of elegance, models called Española, Carolina, Borbonesa or Madrileña. Folk costume and the dress of socially or regionally marginal groups caught the eye of the Romantic century and its painters, following Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla (Colección de trajes de España, tanto antiguos como modernos, 1777-88). Folk costume became nationally iconic after Francisco Goya, and spread largely by means of engravings such as Miguel Gamborino’s Los gritos de Madrid (1809-17) and Antonio Rodríguez’s Colección general de los trajes que en la actualidad se usan en España (Madrid, 1801). Although such sources are iconographically interesting, they are unreliable as a source for popular material culture: they highlight local colour by focusing on remarkable types wearing old-fashioned attire or otherwise being out of the ordinary, often linked to colourful and nationally iconic pastimes such as traditional dances or bullfighting. What such illustrations do is prepare a register of picturesque costumbrismo highlighting regionalist cultural particularities in literature and art.

While there was no single costume which set Spain as a whole apart from the rest of Europe, certain items became iconic and representative: mantillas, fans, and parasols for women, hairnets, cloth caps, and sashes for men. These and regional apparel such as the Basque beret, the Catalan barretino, or Castilian leggings became culturally codified in the late 19th century on the basis of a post-Goya, Romantic-picturesque tradition exemplified by the Romantic Academic genre painter Manuel Rodríguez de Guzmán (1818–1867). In the process, the more flamboyant garments gained a festive stature that was linked to celebrations, weddings, or dances, and associated with traditional display and ostentation. 19th-century periodicals such as El museo de familias and La ilustraction europeo-americana played into such folkloristic traditionalism; a compendium of Spanish costume appeared in 1915 (Juana Natividad de Diego & África León, Compendio de indumentaria española, con un preliminar de la historia del traje y el mobiliario en los principales pueblos de la antigüedad), and a palette of quasi-traditional dress has remained an iconic repertoire for 20th-century painters, from Sorolla (Visión de España) and Rusiñol to Zuloaga.