2 Pesetas Llardecans

Llardecans is a small municipality in the Segrià comarca of Lleida, and this note is a product of the acute small-change shortage that paralyzed Catalonia during the early months of the Spanish Civil War. From mid-1936 onward, hundreds of Catalan municipalities — many with populations under a thousand — issued their own emergency fractional currency after hoarding and metal requisitioning stripped coins from circulation almost entirely. Imprenta Sol in Lleida supplied printing services to several of these local issues across the region.

The nearly square format was dictated by card stock constraints, not design choice. The official stamp served as the primary anti-counterfeiting measure — modest protection, but counterfeiting a 2-peseta local scrip from a village of a few hundred people was hardly a worthwhile enterprise.