5 Centavos Guimarães

Portuguese municipal chambers issued their own emergency paper money — cédulas — during the severe coin shortage that followed World War One. Guimarães was among dozens of municipalities that printed low-denomination notes between roughly 1917 and 1922 to keep local commerce moving when bronze and cupro-nickel coins simply disappeared from circulation, hoarded or melted.

By 1921 the cédula phenomenon was winding down as the national government pushed to reassert monetary control, making late-issue municipal notes like this one shorter-lived in circulation than earlier examples from the same series.