Groat - Philip IV Lérida

1640 is the year the Catalan Revolt — the Guerra dels Segadors — erupted against Castilian authority, and Lérida became one of the flash points of that conflict. Philip IV's government had been quartering Castilian troops in Catalonia and demanding financial contributions toward the Thirty Years' War, which the Principality refused as a violation of its constitutional privileges. The French-backed Generalitat briefly declared Catalonia a republic before placing it under Louis XIII.

Coinage from Lérida in this specific year sits at the precise moment the institutional relationship between Catalonia and the Crown fractured. The revolt would drag on until 1659 and the Peace of the Pyrenees.