50 Pesos

Banco Español de la Habana was the sole note-issuing institution in colonial Cuba, operating under a royal charter granted by Madrid in 1855. The bank's relationship with the Spanish crown grew increasingly strained through the 1870s and 1880s as Cuba's wars of independence disrupted commerce and forced repeated expansions of paper circulation far beyond what silver reserves could support. By the time notes of this series were in active use, public confidence in the bank's ability to redeem them at face value was already eroding.

Bradbury Wilkinson had by 1881 become one of the dominant security printers for colonial and overseas banks, and their work for Habana shows the high intaglio standards of that period. The plates were engraved in London regardless of where payment was nominally demanded.