25 ECU Josep Pla

The ECU — European Currency Unit — was never legal tender in Catalonia or anywhere else; it was a basket currency used in EU accounting and exchange-rate mechanisms. That didn't stop regional governments and municipalities across Europe from issuing ECU-denominated medals and collector pieces throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, exploiting a legal grey area before the euro made the practice obsolete. The Generalitat's series used the format to assert a distinct Catalan cultural presence within the European project.

Josep Pla, the Empordà-born writer honored here, published the bulk of his work under Franco-era censorship that banned Catalan-language publishing for years. His eventual collected works ran to 47 volumes.