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1 Peseta Castellbell i el Vilar
| Issuer | Ajuntament de Castellbell i el Vilar |
|---|---|
| Year | 1937 |
| Type | Emergency banknote |
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| Obverse description | Oval vignette at left enclosing the municipal coat of arms — a crenellated tower surmounted by a flag — surrounded by the circular legend 'AJUNTAMENT DE CASTELLBELL I EL VILAR', all set against a mottled underprint of soft rounded shapes in brown tones. To the right, a handwritten-style cursive text acknowledges the bearer's entitlement, with the denomination 'UNA PESSETA' in bold letterpress type and the numeral '1 PTA' at the lower right. Facsimile signatures of the Alcalde and the Dipositari appear beneath the main text, with the printer's imprint 'MARTÍ, MARÍ Y Cía. BARCELONA' along the lower margin. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | 1 PTA UNA PESSETA (Translation: 1 Peseta One Peseta) |
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| Comments |
Castellbell i el Vilar is a small municipality in the Bages comarca of Catalonia, and like hundreds of similarly sized towns it issued its own emergency fractional currency during 1937 when the Republican government's monetary supply collapsed under wartime pressure. The Consell Municipal assumed issuing authority as a practical matter — coins had vanished from circulation almost entirely, hoarded or melted, and transactions below one peseta had become genuinely unworkable.
Imprenta Martí, Marí y Cia. printed a large volume of these municipal notes for small Catalan towns during the Civil War period, which means the printing quality is consistent but the notes themselves were produced in limited runs tied to purely local demand. Surviving examples from villages this size are disproportionately scarce — circulation was hard, paper was cheap, and redemption after the Nationalist victory in 1939 was neither guaranteed nor pursued.