El Cogul is a small municipality in Les Garrigues, Lleida, and like hundreds of Catalan towns it issued its own fractional paper currency during the Spanish Civil War after the 1936 collapse of small coin circulation rendered everyday commerce nearly impossible. These local emissions — known as moneda local or paper moneda — were authorized under a July 1936 decree from the Generalitat de Catalunya, which gave municipalities legal cover to issue their own scrip rather than let markets seize up entirely.
The Turró catalogue remains the definitive reference for Catalan Civil War local issues, and 847 places this among a vast field of similar municipally-stamped emergency pieces. Survival rates for El Cogul issues are low simply because the town was small and production runs were correspondingly modest.
El Cogul is a small municipality in Les Garrigues, Lleida, and like hundreds of Catalan towns it issued its own fractional paper currency during the Spanish Civil War after the 1936 collapse of small coin circulation rendered everyday commerce nearly impossible. These local emissions — known as moneda local or paper moneda — were authorized under a July 1936 decree from the Generalitat de Catalunya, which gave municipalities legal cover to issue their own scrip rather than let markets seize up entirely.
The Turró catalogue remains the definitive reference for Catalan Civil War local issues, and 847 places this among a vast field of similar municipally-stamped emergency pieces. Survival rates for El Cogul issues are low simply because the town was small and production runs were correspondingly modest.