25 Centavos Countermarked

Between 1872 and 1877, the Spanish colonial administration in Cuba authorized the countermarking of existing silver coinage to validate and recirculate pieces already in use on the island — a response to chronic shortages of properly denominated currency that plagued the colony throughout the Ten Years' War. The conflict, which began in 1868 as Cuba's first major independence uprising, severely disrupted normal commerce and trade flows.

KM#R4.1 specifically designates the countermark applied to host coins of identifiable type; the host itself was frequently a Spanish 2 Reales or similar peninsular silver. The countermark's presence was the legal instrument, not the host coin's original authority.