10 Centavos Fronteira

Fronteira is a small agricultural municipality in the Alentejo interior, and this cédula was issued under the emergency small-change provisions that proliferated across Portuguese municipalities after 1917, when wartime metal shortages drained copper and nickel coins from circulation almost entirely. The Câmara Municipal had no banking infrastructure to fall back on — local government bodies became de facto monetary authorities by necessity.

The printer, Empresa Alentejana de Publicidade, was a regional press operation based in Évora, responsible for a number of Alentejo municipal cédulas during this period. Not a security printer by trade, which shows in the relatively modest anti-counterfeiting provisions typical of these provincial commissions.