5 Pesetas Viladecans; Cooperativa Obrera La Igualtat

Viladecans is a small municipality south of Barcelona, and by 1938 the Republican zone was hemorrhaging hard currency — coins had effectively vanished from circulation, hoarded or melted. Worker cooperatives across Catalonia stepped into the gap, printing their own vales and tokens redeemable within their own networks. La Igualtat — "Equality" — was one such cooperative, and this 5 peseta note functioned as internal scrip rather than legal tender, accepted at cooperative stores and services but worthless outside that circle.

Alsina-Lloreda catalog reference 744 places it within a well-documented but genuinely scarce category: Catalan Civil War-era cooperative emergency issues, most of which were printed in tiny runs and saw heavy use before the Nationalist takeover in early 1939 ended their validity overnight.