10000 Bipkwele 1979 Spanish Royalty Visit; Pattern

Equatorial Guinea gained independence from Spain in 1968, and relations between Macias Nguema's brutal dictatorship and Madrid were predictably strained. The 1979 visit this pattern commemorates followed the overthrow of Nguema by his nephew Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo in August of that year — a coup that Spain quietly welcomed. The pattern was struck in 1980 as Obiang worked to rehabilitate international ties, and copper examples like this were almost certainly exploratory strikes, never approved for circulation.