1 Peseta El Milà

Milà is a small municipality in the Alt Camp comarca of Tarragona, and this note belongs to the extraordinary wave of emergency fractional currency — known as guerra civil paper or moneda de necessitat — issued by Catalan municipalities during the Spanish Civil War. When the Republic's small-denomination coinage disappeared from circulation almost immediately after July 1936, hundreds of towns printed their own substitutes. Most were produced locally with whatever materials were at hand, which accounts for the card stock construction and near-square format.

Turró catalogues over 1,500 Catalan issuers. Milà, with a population that likely numbered in the hundreds, issued this piece for purely local exchange needs. Survival rates for small-town issues vary sharply; the thicker substrate here offered more durability than the tissue-weight issues from some neighboring municipalities.