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5 Centimos Vilafranca del Penedès; Tonel·leria Mecànica del Penedès
| Issuer | Tonel·leria Mecànica del Penedès (Cooperative Society) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1937 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 5 Centimos (0.05 ESP) |
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| Obverse description | Letterpress-printed voucher in blue on plain paper, with a dashed-rule rectangular border running the full perimeter. The issuer name appears in the upper portion, the denomination 'Val per 5 cèts.' in large bold type at centre, date and serial number below, and the printer's imprint 'CUSCÓ' at foot. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Tonel·leria Mecànica del Penedès Val per 5 cèts. Vilafranca 10-9-1937 75 CUSCÓ (Translation: Mechanical Cooperage of the Penedès Voucher for 5 Centimos Vilafranca, September 10, 1937) |
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| Comments |
During the Spanish Civil War, the Republican zone experienced a near-total collapse of small-denomination coinage — copper and silver had vanished from circulation by mid-1936. Municipalities, cooperatives, and individual businesses across Catalonia filled the void by issuing their own emergency paper fractional currency, a practice sanctioned loosely by the Generalitat. This 5 cèntims note is one of those issues: printed by Imprenta Cuscó for a barrel-making cooperative, not a bank or municipal authority.
Tonel·leria Mecànica del Penedès — a mechanical cooperage in Vilafranca del Penedès, the heart of Catalan wine country — issued these tokens primarily to pay workers and facilitate transactions within a local economy still functioning despite the war. The connection to the cooperage trade is specific enough that circulation outside the immediate Penedès district would have been limited at best.