Bonastre is a small municipality in the Camp de Tarragona, and like hundreds of similarly minor Catalan towns, it issued its own fractional emergency currency during the Spanish Civil War — a direct consequence of the coin shortage that followed the Republic's inability to maintain metallic circulation after 1936. These hyperlocal emissions, collectively catalogued under the Turró reference system, were typically produced in small quantities on whatever card stock the local ayuntamiento had available, which accounts for the variable thickness collectors encounter across specimens.
The handstamp and serial number were the town's only practical safeguards against duplication — modest security for a note that almost certainly never circulated beyond the village itself.
Bonastre is a small municipality in the Camp de Tarragona, and like hundreds of similarly minor Catalan towns, it issued its own fractional emergency currency during the Spanish Civil War — a direct consequence of the coin shortage that followed the Republic's inability to maintain metallic circulation after 1936. These hyperlocal emissions, collectively catalogued under the Turró reference system, were typically produced in small quantities on whatever card stock the local ayuntamiento had available, which accounts for the variable thickness collectors encounter across specimens.
The handstamp and serial number were the town's only practical safeguards against duplication — modest security for a note that almost certainly never circulated beyond the village itself.