20 Escudos

Portugal's postwar silver coinage walked a careful line — the Estado Novo regime under Salazar maintained silver in circulation well into the 1950s while most Western nations had already abandoned it, partly as a matter of fiscal conservatism and partly as deliberate policy signaling stability. The .720 fineness was a step down from earlier Portuguese silver standards, introduced in 1942 as wartime pressures on metal supplies bit hard.

The 1952–1955 run represents the final years this denomination would appear in silver before the type was eventually abandoned. By the early 1960s, rising silver prices made continued production economically untenable across the entire Portuguese silver coinage program.