5 Centavos Casa da Moeda

Portugal's wartime monetary disruption of 1917–1918 pushed the government to authorize the Casa da Moeda — the mint — to issue emergency low-denomination paper directly, bypassing the Banco de Portugal entirely. Metal coinage had effectively vanished from circulation, hoarded or melted, and the gap at the fractional level was acute enough that the mint itself became an issuing authority, an arrangement without precedent in modern Portuguese monetary history.

These small-format emergency cédulas circulated alongside similar issues from municipal chambers and other improvised authorities. The self-printed, self-issued nature of this note — the same institution designed, printed, and put it into circulation — is the detail that sets the series apart.