0 Euro - José Saramago

The 0 Euro souvenir note program was launched in France in 2015 by EuroSouvenir — a private commercial venture, not a central bank initiative — and has since expanded to cover hundreds of cultural and historical subjects across Europe. These notes carry no legal tender status anywhere, though they are printed to genuine banknote specification by Oberthur Fiduciaire, the same contractor responsible for real currency production for multiple sovereign issuers.

Saramago, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998, was the first Portuguese-language author to receive it — a distinction that generated considerable political friction at the time, as his novel *The Gospel According to Jesus Christ* had previously been withdrawn from a European literary prize by the Portuguese government on religious grounds.