62 | Spanish Banknotes

Automatically generated translation

5000 Pesetas. June 11, 1938. Without numbering and the Bradbury seal on the space intended for the cashier's signature. (Edifil 2021: NE35M, Pick: 92). Extraordinarily rare and very spectacular, in total no more than ten copies are known and all of them in the phases prior to the final issue that was never printed, without a doubt we are facing the most iconic banknote of the 20th century along with that of "The Lady of Elche", but the latter not as rare as the "Fortuny". EBC++. Encapsulated PMG58 (minor ink) (to give us an idea of ​​the rarity, as of March 1, this note is the only one graded in PMG) (for information purposes we note that this copy that comes from the Bradbury archive does not show the mark of its assembly as most of the banknotes from the archive that do present it).

The first attempt to issue a banknote with a value above the legal limit of 1000 pesetas dates back to 1938, during the Spanish Civil War, in Republican territory. The need to put high denominations into circulation was covered by the issuance of the 500 and 1000 peseta banknotes of 1928, as well as the 500 pesetas of 1935 of Hernán Cortés. However, uncontrolled Republican inflation required moving the bar to values ​​never seen before. That is why the Bank of Spain, already moved to Barcelona, ​​commissioned the manufacturing of a 5,000 peseta banknote in April 1938 from the English company Bradbury, Wilkinson and Cº, with which Spain had been working since 1906.

The obverse of that banknote shows a portrait of the brilliant Catalan orientalist-style painter, Mariano Fortuny, painted by himself around 1873, shortly before he died. The reverse of the banknote reproduces the painting “The Vicariate”, painted in 1870 by Fortuny himself and whose engraving on the banknote we owe to the British Edward T. Dawson.

This copy of 5,000 pesetas from 1938 that we show comes directly from the archive of the English house Bradbury, Wilkinson and Cº, where it served as a reference and control.