50 Céntimos '2 Rals' Besora

Santa Maria de Besora is a tiny municipality in the Osona comarca of Catalonia, and this 50 céntimos emergency piece is among the smallest-format locally issued notes from the Spanish Civil War period. Virtually every Catalan municipality of any size — and many with almost none — issued their own paper money between 1936 and 1939 when coinage disappeared from circulation almost entirely, hoarded or melted down. The popular nickname "2 Rals" reflects the old Spanish real, where two reales equalled 25 céntimos, making the folk arithmetic here slightly off — though such informal labeling was common and tells you more about how rural communities thought about value than any official denomination did.

Turró's catalog remains the definitive reference for these Catalan municipal emissions, and the 433 listing for Besora indicates a very limited local print run on card stock rather than proper banknote paper.