5 Pesetas - Provisional Government

The Provisional Government that issued this coin came to power following the Glorious Revolution of September 1868, which deposed Isabella II after decades of political instability and dynastic controversy. Spain's new rulers needed coinage immediately — and they needed it to look nothing like the monarchy they had just overthrown. The result was a deliberately republican-facing design produced while the government simultaneously searched for a new king, a search that would eventually drag half of Europe into diplomatic crisis and provide the immediate trigger for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

Cal#2 places this among the earliest documented varieties of the type.