10 centavos Portimão

Portimão's municipal chamber issued small-denomination cédulas like this one during the currency shortages that plagued Portugal following World War One, when a collapse in coin production left provincial towns effectively unable to conduct ordinary retail trade. Local governments across the country were authorized — sometimes loosely — to print their own fractional emergency notes, resulting in hundreds of distinct local issues between roughly 1917 and 1922.

Provincial printing quality varied sharply, and Portimão's issues were produced locally rather than by one of the Lisbon commercial printers, which shows.