50 Céntimos Villacarrillo

Villacarrillo is a small olive-growing town in the province of Jaén, Andalusia. In the summer of 1936, following the military uprising that triggered the Civil War, the Republican-held municipalities across Spain found themselves with an acute shortage of small-denomination coinage — hoarding and disrupted supply chains stripped local economies of functional change almost overnight. Hundreds of ayuntamientos responded by printing their own emergency fractional notes, and Villacarrillo was among them.

These municipal issues were never coordinated by any central authority, printed on whatever stock was locally available, and typically authorized by the alcalde's rubber stamp. Survival rates vary enormously — some town issues are genuinely rare, others surface regularly.