The peseta was the currency of Spain between 1869 and 2002. Along with the French franc, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra (which had no national currency with legal tender).
The name of the currency comes from pesseta, the diminutive form of the word peça, which is a Catalan word that means piece or fraction. The first non-official coins which contained the word "peseta" were made in 1808 in Barcelona.
Traditionally, there was never a single symbol or special character for the Spanish peseta. Common abbreviations were "Pt", "Pta", "Pts" and "Ptas", sometimes using superior letters: "Ptas".
Common earlier Spanish models of mechanical typewriters had the expression "Pts" on a single type head, as a shorthand intended to fill a single type space (Pts) in tables instead of three (P+t+s).
Later, Spanish models of IBM electric typewriters also included the same type in its repertoire.
When the first IBM PC was designed in 1980, it included a "peseta symbol" "Pts" in the ROM of the Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) and Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) video output cards' hardware, with the code number 158. This original character set chart later became the MS-DOS code page 437. Some spreadsheet software for PC under MS-DOS, as Lotus 1-2-3, employed this character as the peseta symbol in their Spanish editions. Subsequent international MS-DOS code pages, like code page 850 and others, deprecated this character in favour of some other national characters.
In order to guarantee the interchange with previous encodings such as code page 437, the international standard Unicode includes this character as U+20A7 PESETA SIGN in its Currency Symbols block. Other than that, the use of the "peseta symbol" standalone is extremely rare, and has been outdated since the adoption of the euro in Spain.
In the version 1.0 of Unicode the character ₧ U+20A7 PESETA SIGN had two reference glyphs: a "Pts" ligature glyph as in IBM code page 437 and an erroneous P with stroke. In Unicode 2.0 the reference glyph P with stroke was erroneously displayed as the only symbol for peseta and was latter corrected to the Pts ligature and a separate character code was added for the peso sign.
The peseta was subdivided into 100 céntimos or, informally, 4 reales. The last coin of any value under one peseta was a 50-céntimo coin issued in 1980 to celebrate Spain's hosting of the 1982 FIFA World Cup. The last 25-céntimo coin (or real) was dated 1959, the ten céntimos also dated 1959; both coins bore the portrait of Franco. The 1-céntimo coin was last minted in 1913 and featured King Alfonso XIII. The 1⁄2-céntimo coin was last minted in 1868 and featured Queen Isabel II.
The peseta was introduced in 1869 after Spain joined the Latin Monetary Union in 1868. The Spanish Law of June 26, 1864 decreed that in preparation for joining the Latin Monetary Union (set up in 1865), the peseta became a subdivision of the peso with 1 peso duro = 5 pesetas. The peseta replaced the escudo at a rate of 5 pesetas = 1 peso duro = 2 escudos.
The peseta was equal to 4.5 grams of silver, or 0.290322 grams of gold, the standard used by all the currencies of the Latin Monetary Union. From 1873, only the gold standard applied.
The political turbulence of the early twentieth century (especially during the years after the World War I) caused the monetary union to break up, although it was not until 1927 that it officially ended.
In 1959, Spain became part of the Bretton Woods System, pegging the peseta at a value of 60 pesetas = 1 U.S. dollar. In 1967, the peseta followed the devaluation of the British pound, maintaining the exchange rate of 168 pesetas = 1 pound and establishing a new rate of 70 pesetas = 1 U.S. dollar.
The peseta was replaced by the euro in 2002, following the establishment of the euro in 1999. The exchange rate was 1 euro = 166.386 pesetas.
The peseta was replaced by the euro (€) in 1999 on currency exchange boards. Euro coins and notes were introduced in January 2002, and on 1 March 2002 the peseta lost its legal tender status in Spain, and also in Andorra. The conversion rate was 1 euro = 166.386 ESP.
Peseta notes issued since 1939 and coins that were legal tender on 31 December 2001 remain exchangeable at any branch of the Spanish Central Bank until 31 December 2020. According to that entity, as of March 2011 pesetas to a value estimated at 1.7 billion euros had not been converted to euro.
Huge amounts of pesetas of dubious provenance are believed to have helped to fuel a cash-based money laundering real estate boom just prior to, and after, the conversion to the euro. Mafia and criminal holdings of billions of pesetas were poured into massive real estate projects in Spain and elsewhere; the real estate could then be legally sold to obtain euros.
Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (3 November 1856 – 19 May 1912) was a Spanish scholar, historian and literary critic. Even though his main interest was the history of ideas, and Hispanic philology in general, he also cultivated poetry, translation and philosophy. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.
He was born at Santander where he showed that he was an infant prodigy. At only 15, he studied under Manuel Milà i Fontanals at the University of Barcelona (1871–1872), then proceeded to the central University of Madrid. His academic success was unprecedented; a special law was passed by the Cortes to enable him to become a professor at 22. Three years later, he was elected a member of the Real Academia Española; but he was already well-known throughout Spain.
His first volume, Estudios críticos sobre escritores montañeses (1876), had attracted little notice, and his scholarly Horacio en España (1877) appealed only to students. He became famous, through his Ciencia española (1878), a collection of polemical essays defending the national tradition against the attacks of political and religious reformers. The unbending orthodoxy of this work is even more noticeable in the Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (1880–1886), and the writer was hailed as the champion of the Ultramontane party. As the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908–10) described his work, "Every page of his writings reveals a wealth of strong common sense, clear perception, and a vein of wonderful and ever varying erudition. Thoroughly Catholic in spirit, he found his greatest delight, he declared, in devoting all his work to the glory of God and the exaltation of the name of Jesus".
His lectures (1881) on Calderón established his reputation as a literary critic, and his work as an historian of Spanish literature was continued in his Historia de las ideas estéticas en España (1881–1891), his edition (1890–1903) of Lope de Vega, his Antología de poetas líricos castellanos (1890–1906), and his Orígenes de la novela (1905). Although some of his judgments, mainly those related to the defense of Spanish tradition, are no longer accepted, his studies of Spanish literature (Medieval, Renaissance, and Golden Age) are still valuable.
He was professor of Spanish literature at the University of Madrid (1878–98) and director of the Biblioteca Nacional de España (1898–1912).
He died at Santander. He is buried in Santander Cathedral, where his monument may still be seen.