10 Euros Independence War - Manuela Malasaña

Manuela Malasaña was a Madrid seamstress, likely seventeen years old, executed by French troops on 2 May 1808 — the same day the Dos de Mayo Uprising began. The official account holds that she was shot for carrying scissors, which Napoleonic forces treated as a concealed weapon under martial law. Whether factual or embellished in the decades after, the story made her one of the primary martyrs of Spanish resistance to French occupation, her name attached to the Madrileño neighborhood Malasaña long before this coin was struck.

The 2008 issue was part of a broader Banco de España commemorative program marking the bicentennial of the Peninsular War.