Viana do Castelo's municipal chamber issued small-denomination cédulas like this one during the acute coin shortage that gripped Portugal from roughly 1917 onward — a crisis driven by wartime metal requisitioning and the hoarding of bronze and copper coins by a public with no confidence in the Republic's finances. Municipalities across the country stepped in to fill the gap, producing locally authorized emergency paper for denominations that no bank would bother printing.
MA#2309 places this within Gonçalves Miralles's comprehensive catalogue of Portuguese notgeld-equivalent issues — a category that remains underappreciated by collectors focused on Banco de Portugal material.
Viana do Castelo's municipal chamber issued small-denomination cédulas like this one during the acute coin shortage that gripped Portugal from roughly 1917 onward — a crisis driven by wartime metal requisitioning and the hoarding of bronze and copper coins by a public with no confidence in the Republic's finances. Municipalities across the country stepped in to fill the gap, producing locally authorized emergency paper for denominations that no bank would bother printing.
MA#2309 places this within Gonçalves Miralles's comprehensive catalogue of Portuguese notgeld-equivalent issues — a category that remains underappreciated by collectors focused on Banco de Portugal material.