500 Pesos

By 1896, the Banco Español de la Isla de Cuba was issuing paper against a colonial economy under severe strain — the Cuban War of Independence had resumed the previous year, and Spanish military expenditure on the island was escalating rapidly. This 500 Peso note belongs to a series widely understood to have been issued partly to finance that war effort rather than to serve ordinary commercial banking needs.

High-denomination notes from this final period of Spanish colonial banking in Cuba rarely survived in quantity. The political collapse of 1898 left the bank's outstanding issues unredeemed, and most examples still in existence were preserved outside Cuba entirely.