1 Peseta - Juan Carlos I

Spain's transition from Francoism produced several coinage anomalies, and this series is one of them. The dies carry a date frozen at 1975 — the year of Franco's death — while the actual striking years run well into the reign of Juan Carlos I. The star privy marks, not the obverse date, tell you when each piece was actually minted.

Juan Carlos had been personally designated by Franco as his successor in 1969, bypassing his own father Don Juan. The early peseta coinage of his reign was, in a real sense, numismatic evidence of that uncomfortable inheritance.