5 Centimos Barcelona; Gran Metro C. N. T.

The Gran Metro in Barcelona was collectivized by the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) following the July 1936 military uprising, part of a sweeping worker takeover of Catalan industry and transport infrastructure. With coin circulation effectively paralyzed — silver and copper hoarded or melted almost immediately after the fighting began — transit operators across Republican Spain issued their own fractional tokens and cardboard notes to keep daily commerce moving. This piece is one of those emergency substitutes.

CNT-issued transport scrip from the Barcelona metro is among the more historically loaded of the Civil War emergency issues, produced by a workforce that had genuinely seized, rather than merely managed, the system they ran.