Arenys de Mar, a small Catalan coastal town, issued its own emergency coinage in 1937 as the Republican monetary system buckled under the pressures of the Civil War. The central government's inability to maintain adequate small-change supply forced hundreds of Spanish municipalities to authorize their own local scrip — Turró catalogued over a thousand such issues. These pieces were strictly local: theoretically unusable beyond the issuing municipality, which created genuine hardship for anyone traveling between towns.
Aluminium was chosen not by preference but by necessity, with copper and other base metals increasingly diverted to the war effort.
Arenys de Mar, a small Catalan coastal town, issued its own emergency coinage in 1937 as the Republican monetary system buckled under the pressures of the Civil War. The central government's inability to maintain adequate small-change supply forced hundreds of Spanish municipalities to authorize their own local scrip — Turró catalogued over a thousand such issues. These pieces were strictly local: theoretically unusable beyond the issuing municipality, which created genuine hardship for anyone traveling between towns.
Aluminium was chosen not by preference but by necessity, with copper and other base metals increasingly diverted to the war effort.