25 Pesetas

The 1893 series marked one of the last occasions the Banco de España produced low-denomination notes of this type before the monetary pressures of the Cuban and Philippine colonial crises forced successive emergency emissions later in the decade. Bartolomé Maura Montaner, the engraver responsible for the intaglio work here, was one of Spain's most accomplished practitioners of the craft — he also served as an official engraver to the Spanish state mint and produced medal and coin dies of considerable distinction.

Watermarking was the sole mechanical security measure employed, modest even by the standards of the period. The note was printed entirely in-house at the Madrid workshop, which by the 1890s had developed genuine technical self-sufficiency rather than relying on foreign contractors as many contemporary European central banks still did.