1 Peseta Belmez

Belmez is a small coal-mining municipality in the province of Córdoba, and this note is one of hundreds of emergency fractional issues — conocidos as billetes locales or vales — that flooded Republican-held Spain after the military uprising of July 1936 collapsed the normal coin supply almost overnight. The Frente Popular committees administering these towns were left to improvise their own small-change solutions, usually with whatever printing resources existed locally.

Gari's catalog documents considerable variation within Belmez emissions, and type 258-A likely distinguishes an early printing state or a specific paper stock from later issues. Attribution to a single print run is difficult — many of these local bodies issued in small batches as need arose.