500 Piso Jose Rizal

Issued in the centennial year of José Rizal's execution by Spanish colonial authorities — he was shot at Bagumbayan on December 30, 1896 — this coin was part of the BSP's broader commemorative program marking one hundred years since his death. Rizal had been convicted of rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy despite mounting evidence that the trial was predetermined, a fact Philippine historians have relitigated extensively in the century since.