25 Céntimos Tortosa

During the Spanish Civil War, the Republican zone suffered an acute shortage of small-denomination coinage almost immediately after July 1936. Municipalities, cooperatives, and even individual businesses filled the gap by issuing their own emergency paper fractional currency — a phenomenon so widespread that thousands of distinct local issues appeared across Catalonia and the Levant between 1936 and 1939. Tortosa's Ajuntament was one of hundreds of town councils that essentially printed their own money out of necessity, not authority.

Imprenta Algueró-Baiges was a local commercial press, not a specialist security printer. These notes were produced with whatever equipment was at hand, which is why surviving examples frequently show uneven ink distribution and minor misregistration.