10 Pesetas Barcelona; Preventori Judicial - Economat

The Preventori Judicial de Barcelona was the institution responsible for holding individuals awaiting trial under the Republican justice system during the Civil War. Its Economat — an internal canteen or commissary — issued small-denomination vouchers for use exclusively within the facility, which is why these pieces circulate almost exclusively among specialists in Spanish Civil War locales rather than mainstream peseta collectors. Thick blue card stock was the material of choice for many Catalan institutional issues of 1938, practical and harder to counterfeit than thin paper.

By mid-1938, Barcelona was under severe economic strain, and institutional scrip of this kind filled gaps left by the near-total collapse of small-change supply.