There are many traditions that have been adopted as characteristic of Panama's nationality, but among all of these probably no single expression stands higher than the pollera, the women's national dress. Along with the other traditional Latin American dresses, the polleradescended from the Spanish dress of the 16th and 17th centuries, although it's hard to indicated its exact point of origin. Behold what wrote Nieves de Hoyos, director of the Museo del Pueblo Espanol, in an article published in the Revista de Indias of December, 1963: "The origin is in Spain, but not from the regional Spanish dress, which contrary to general opinion did not develop its current form until the eighteenth century or later. The pollera in Panama evolved from the Spanish feminine dress of the seventeenth century, not from the court dress with its grand hoops covered with velvets and embroidered silks embellished with laces, gold, and silver threads - the dress which immediately comes to mind to most people because they have frequently seen the pictures of Velazquez. In the seventeenth century, as in any other time, contemporary with the beautiful court dresses there was the daily house dress, which in this epoch was generally white with a full skirt of two or three ruffles embroidered or appliqued in floral designs. This description is, simply, the pollera."
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