5 Centavos Arcos de Valdevez

Portuguese hospital cédulas are among the stranger byproducts of the First Republic's chronic coinage shortage. Between roughly 1917 and 1922, small-denomination emergency notes were issued by an extraordinary range of local bodies — municipalities, misericórdias, industrial firms, and, as here, hospitals — to substitute for low-value bronze and cupro-nickel coins that had disappeared from circulation through hoarding. The Hospital de S. José in Arcos de Valdevez, a small market town in the Minho, was one of the more unlikely issuers in that catalogue.

These cédulas were technically illegal under several successive decrees but were tolerated because the alternative was commercial paralysis. Arcos de Valdevez examples are rarely encountered outside northern Portuguese collections.