5 Pesetas Barcelona; Unió de Cooperadors; green

The Unió de Cooperadors de Barcelona was a consumer cooperative federation with deep roots in the Catalan labor movement. During the Spanish Civil War, the collapse of small-denomination coin circulation — driven by hoarding and the breakdown of central authority — forced hundreds of municipalities, cooperatives, and trade unions across the Republican zone to issue their own emergency fractional currency. This note is one product of that crisis.

Imprenta Martí, Marí y Cia. handled a notable volume of this wartime scrip work in Barcelona, printing for multiple issuers simultaneously. The cooperative context matters: these notes functioned as internal purchasing certificates as much as general circulating currency, redeemable within the cooperative's own network of shops.