1/2 Real - Fernando VII

Fernando VII never set foot in Mexico and barely governed Spain. By 1808, Napoleon had forced both Fernando and his father Carlos IV to abdicate at Bayonne, installing Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne instead. The colonial mints continued striking in Fernando's name throughout his captivity — partly from institutional inertia, partly as a deliberate political statement of loyalty to the legitimate Bourbon claimant. Meanwhile, Mexico's own independence insurgency was gathering force, with Hidalgo's revolt erupting in September 1810.

This issue thus circulated through the opening violence of the Mexican War of Independence, a conflict that would eventually render the entire colonial monetary apparatus obsolete within a decade.