10 Centimos Lleida; Kiosco de periódicos Fontfreda

Fontfreda's newsstand in Lleida issued this tiny square card during the Civil War years to address the chronic shortage of small change that paralyzed everyday commerce across Republican-held Spain from 1936 onward. Fractional coinage had effectively vanished — hoarded, melted, or simply absent — and the vacuum was filled by an extraordinary proliferation of emergency issues from municipalities, cooperatives, unions, and, in cases like this one, individual private businesses.

A newsstand issuing its own currency is about as far down the chain of monetary improvisation as it gets. AL#3481 is among the more obscure Catalan vales documented by Turró's census.