5.000 Escudos

The 5.000 Escudo denomination was the highest-value note in regular circulation for much of the late Portuguese Republic period, a position that reflected the cumulative inflation of the escudo across the preceding decades. Banco de Portugal brought printing entirely in-house by the 1980s, and this series was produced at their Lisbon facility — an unusual degree of vertical integration compared to most European central banks of the period, many of whom continued to contract De La Rue or similar specialists.

The series ran across two distinct signature combinations, with the 1993 issue substituting Sousa Gomes for Passos Moreira in the second position. Portugal's accession to the EEC in 1986 had already set the clock running on the escudo's eventual replacement, though that came only with euro adoption in 2002.