200 Pesetas Juan Luis Vives

Juan Luis Vives, the Valencian humanist philosopher whose works on education and poor relief made him one of the most progressive thinkers of the sixteenth century, spent much of his career in exile — his family had been prosecuted by the Spanish Inquisition for secretly practicing Judaism. He died in Bruges in 1540, having never safely returned to Spain. The irony of his appearance on a Spanish state coin was not lost on scholars when the issue was announced.