Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Turning back the clock

I read in the Guardian this morning about a town in La Mancha that has reintroduced the peseta but just for one month. There are still millions of pesetas in circulation according to the Bank of Spain, lots of people clung on to them when the country changed to the Euro in 1999.

The move has turned out to be profitable for local businesses  because people from around the area  have taken the opportunity to visit Villamayor de Santiago to spend their old currency. At the end of the month, the shopkeepers will take the pesetas to the Bank of Spain in Madrid to exchange them for Euros. Since the rate of exchange was set at 1 Euro = 166.386 ESP, they will have large bundles of notes to take with them.

No comments: