40 Centimos Argentona

Argentona, a small municipality in the Maresme region of Catalonia, issued its own emergency cardboard currency during the Spanish Civil War after the collapse of reliable coin supply left local commerce effectively paralyzed. Hundreds of Catalan and Aragonese municipalities did the same between 1936 and 1938, producing what collectors now classify as moneda local — a phenomenon unmatched in scale anywhere else in twentieth-century Europe.

Cardboard degraded quickly in circulation, which is why surviving examples in decent condition are harder to locate than the sheer number of issuing municipalities might suggest.