1 Centavo Portalegre

Portuguese municipal chambers gained emergency note-issuing authority during the severe coin shortage that gripped the country in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Portalegre, a small administrative center in the Alto Alentejo, was among dozens of municipalities that responded by printing their own low-denomination cédulas — essentially promises to pay backed by little more than local civic authority. The legal framework was improvised and short-lived; the Banco de Portugal moved to suppress municipal issues as soon as central supply stabilized.

One centavo denominations were the most purely functional of the cédulas, worth almost nothing individually but necessary to make change. Few were kept as keepsakes.