1 Peseta Arnes

One of hundreds of emergency local paper issues produced across Republican-held Catalonia during the Civil War, when the collapse of normal coin supply — silver hoarded, copper requisitioned — forced municipalities to print their own fractional currency. Arnes is a tiny village in the Terra Alta comarca, close to the front lines that would shift dramatically during the Battle of the Ebro in 1938. The Consejo Municipal, like its counterparts throughout the region, had no printing infrastructure worth speaking of; most such notes were produced on whatever press was available locally, often a job printer.

The sole security measure is an official municipal stamp, applied by hand. Turró catalogued over a thousand distinct Republican local issues, and the Arnes pieces rank among the more obscure.