50 Céntimos Seva

Seva is a small municipality in the Osona comarca of Catalonia, and this 50 céntimos note belongs to the extraordinary proliferation of locally issued emergency scrip that flooded Catalonia and the rest of the Republican zone during the Spanish Civil War. When the central government and the Generalitat failed to keep small-denomination coinage in circulation — much of it hoarded, melted, or simply absent — hundreds of municipalities printed or stamped their own fractional currency on whatever material was at hand. Cardboard was the practical answer.

Turró's catalog documents over 2,000 such emissions. That Seva's issue earned its own reference number says more about the comprehensiveness of the catalog than the importance of the issuer.