10 Céntimos Barcheta

Barcheta is a small agricultural municipality in Valencia's Ribera Alta comarca — in 1937 its population numbered only a few hundred. That such a village issued its own emergency paper money is less surprising than it sounds: the Republican zone during the Civil War saw hundreds of municipalities printing local scrip after coinage disappeared from circulation almost entirely, hoarded or melted down within months of the July 1936 uprising.

The thick card stock was a practical response to the expectation of heavy handling in a tiny local economy — though most of these pieces survived precisely because circulation was so geographically limited.