500 Reales de Vellón Banco de Málaga

The Banco de Málaga was one of a cluster of provincial Spanish banks authorized under the 1856 banking law, which briefly permitted regional note issuance before the Banco de España absorbed most of their privileges in the 1870s. This note dates from that narrow window of provincial banking autonomy — a short-lived experiment that ended badly for most of the institutions involved.

Perkins, Bacon & Petch were chosen by several of these Spanish provincial banks, almost certainly because their intaglio work and security printing reputation made London the practical default for institutions that lacked domestic alternatives of comparable quality. The reales de vellón denomination itself was already living on borrowed time in 1860, superseded by the escudo system just four years later in 1864.