25 Céntimos Cuenca, Colectividad Gastronómica

One of hundreds of locally issued vouchers that proliferated across Republican Spain after the July 1936 military uprising froze normal economic life. When coin disappeared from circulation almost overnight — hoarded, melted, or simply absent in smaller towns — collectives, unions, and municipalities printed their own scrip to keep local commerce moving. This note comes from the gastronomic workers' collective in Cuenca, jointly organized under the UGT and CNT, the two major and frequently rival labor federations whose wartime cooperation was itself remarkable.

Cuenca remained under Republican control until nearly the end of the war, falling to Nationalist forces in March 1939. Very few of these fractional vouchers survived — they were ephemeral by design, printed on thin stock for immediate transactional use.