5 ECU Josep Trueta

Josep Trueta, the Catalan surgeon who fled Franco's Spain in 1939, developed his wound-treatment method — immobilizing infected limbs in plaster without drainage — while treating casualties of the Spanish Civil War. The British military adopted his technique during World War II, and it is credited with saving thousands of lives on the Allied side. The Generalitat issued this piece under its limited autonomous authority to produce commemorative coinage, a power it has exercised since the restoration of Catalan self-government in 1977.