Spanish Civil War Banknotes

I have collected the ones issued by the Republican Government:







Mainly because of the allegorical feminine portraits on them. They are not expensive, but hard to find at a price that is not ridiculous, I think some sellers price them too high.

Females on banknotes are always going to set you back more than a few quid, unless you want the ones that have been handled already.

The Spanish Civil War is one of those areas I would really like to research a lot more sometime, it was so complex with so many external participants, USA, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, USSR etc. Most of the Republican banknotes were actually just continuations of the earlier Kingdom notes until 1936, when the SC's above were issued. By then a lot of local emergency money was issued too.

Unfortunately I don't believe that the good guys won or lost. It is a case where no matter who won the war, the country was going to suffer one way or another. The Republican movement was supported with volunteers from the USA, received money from France, and arms from the USSR. We all know what happened with the Nationalist victory, a repressive dictatorship with fascist underpinnings, but that tacitly used religion as a base.

The Republicans had they been victorious would have likely created more conflict amongst themselves, because of the coalescent nature of their movement which range from moderate to Marxist.

One thing I am trying to determine is how currency was issued and did it circulate universally or only in a particular region of that participants control. With the exception of the small change notes, the rest of the notes issued by Banco de España stated as such and not Republica Española which makes distinguishing which side issued which currency a bit of a pain.

Peter, thanks for adding to the story. Curiously the belligerents in the US Civil War of 1861-65 had different perspectives of issuing currency, whereas the South had a more decentralised system, with more States issuing currency with the Confederate Government issuing as much or more, the Union Federal Government basically monopolised the issue of paper money after 1863 by imposing 10% excise taxes on currency issues by states, banks etc. This effectively eliminated banks and municipal governments or state governments from issuing paper money.

As a matter of requisition, Confederate Armies were made by their commanders to pay for all goods taken from civilians, be they in territory considered to be within the Confederate realm, or that considered to be in the Union realm, for instance when Genl. Robert E. Lee's army invaded Pennsylvania in June and July of 1863 they paid for all goods taken from shopkeepers etc. However shopkeepers found that the payment was really more of a formality as Confederate currency had absolutely no value beyond a near worthless curiousity in the North.

But quite frankly, the Union greenback or dollar had little more worth, in fact it's purchasing power during the worst time for the Union right after the Confederate victories in the Valley campaign to immediately after the Union victory at Gettysburg and Vicksburg got as low as 11¢ in precious metal. The only constant values of anything exchangeable were those of precious metal coins, and even crazily bronze coins disappeared from circulation.

I imagine that a similar scenario played out in Spain. This is a graph of the average exchange rate for the Peseta during the era of 1930-1940:

These tables present the price of one United States Dollar.
Spain, 1930 - 1940
1930 P 8.57118368 Peseta
1931 P 10.47636009 Peseta
1932 P 12.43193516 Peseta
1933 P 9.329315508 Peseta
1934 P 7.34484025 Peseta
1935 P 7.310850033 Peseta
1936 P 8.120969969 Peseta
1937 P 16.52182533 Peseta
1938 P 17.85714286 Peseta
1939 P 9.407249226 Peseta
1940 P 10.72765697 Peseta

Notice the 1931-32 rates, this was when Spain became a Republic with the deposition of Alphonso XIII. By 1934 the political situation stablised somewhat, and the Peseta gained in value. Then 1936 rolls around and a commander in Morocco launches the beginning of the military conflict and the Civil War breaks out, and the Peseta plunges in value. 1939 sees defeat of the Republican government, and a evaluation of the Peseta, but 1940 brings war in Europe and by then most European currencies began to slide in value.