50 Diners - Joan Martí i Alanis Pyrenean Chamois

Andorra's coinage program through the late 1980s and early 1990s was largely a fiscal exercise — the principality had no central bank and no domestic monetary tradition, issuing collector pieces primarily to generate revenue through numismatic sales abroad. This particular issue bears the countersignature of Joan Martí i Alanis, Bishop of Urgell, whose role as co-prince gave the Church of Rome a direct hand in authorizing Andorran coinage well into the modern era — an arrangement unchanged since the Paréage of 1278.

The Pyrenean chamois population in Andorra was already under conservation pressure by 1991, hunted to critically low numbers before protected zone legislation took hold in the late twentieth century.