100 Pesos First Spanish Railroad, Piedfort

Cuba issued this piedfort in 1989 to commemorate the first railway constructed in Spanish colonial territory — a line connecting Havana to Bejucal, inaugurated in November 1837, predating any railroad on the Iberian Peninsula itself by nearly a year. The irony that a colony beat the metropole to rail technology was not lost on contemporaries, and the line was built primarily to haul sugar, not passengers.

Piedfort production from the Banco Nacional during the late 1980s was extremely limited, aimed squarely at the international collector market as Cuba sought hard currency during deepening economic strain.