Replacement By The Euro
The peseta was replaced by the euro (€) in 1999 on currency exchange boards. Euro coins and notes were introduced in January 2002, and on March 1, 2002, the peseta lost its legal tender status in Spain, and also in Andorra. The exchange rate was 1 euro = 166.386 ESP. Prices in many Andorran supermarkets and other retail establishments are still shown dual-priced in euros and pesetas or in euros and French francs.
Peseta notes and coins that were legal tender on December 31, 2001, remain exchangeable indefinitely at any branch of the central bank. According to this entity, pesetas with a value estimated in 1.7 billion euros were never 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 pesetas in the billions were poured into massive real estate projects in Spain and elsewhere, the real estate could then be legally sold into euros.
Read more about this topic: Spanish Peseta
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“Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.”
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