Albiol is a small municipality in the Camp de Tarragona, and like dozens of Catalan towns during the Spanish Civil War, it issued its own emergency fractional currency in 1937 when metal coinage had effectively vanished from circulation — hoarded, melted, or requisitioned for the war effort. These cardboard *vales* were a local stopgap, valid only within the issuing municipality and backed by nothing more than community trust. Most were printed in tiny quantities and saw hard daily use, which is why surviving examples in any reasonable condition are genuinely difficult to find.
Albiol is a small municipality in the Camp de Tarragona, and like dozens of Catalan towns during the Spanish Civil War, it issued its own emergency fractional currency in 1937 when metal coinage had effectively vanished from circulation — hoarded, melted, or requisitioned for the war effort. These cardboard *vales* were a local stopgap, valid only within the issuing municipality and backed by nothing more than community trust. Most were printed in tiny quantities and saw hard daily use, which is why surviving examples in any reasonable condition are genuinely difficult to find.