20 000 Pesetas - Juan Carlos I Tupac Amaru I

This issue belongs to the Ibero-American series, a joint commemorative program launched in 1991 — though several coins, including this one, were struck in 1990 as inaugural pieces — coordinating mints across Spain and Latin America around shared pre-Columbian and colonial themes. Túpac Amaru I was the last indigenous Sapa Inca, executed by Spanish colonial authorities in Cusco in 1572 after a prolonged resistance from the neo-Inca refuge state at Vilcabamba. His name was later borrowed by the 18th-century rebel José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who took the name Túpac Amaru II before his own execution in 1781.