50 Céntimos Alcoba

Alcoba is a small municipality in the province of Ciudad Real, Castilla-La Mancha. During the Spanish Civil War, the Republican zone suffered an acute shortage of small-denomination coinage, prompting hundreds of local councils — many of them tiny — to issue their own emergency paper fractional currency. These municipal emergency notes, known collectively as "cartones" or "vales," were produced locally with whatever printing resources were at hand, which is why card stock was a common substrate: it was sturdier than thin paper and easier to source than proper banknote stock.

Catalogued under Gari as 81-A, suggesting at least one variant exists for the series. Alcoba's total wartime issue was almost certainly limited in quantity, and survival rates for small-town Civil War fractionals are erratic — some are surprisingly common, others nearly impossible to locate.