Blondie!

 Another addition to the ephemera collection - a brass Republican peseta from 1937 during the Spanish Civil War

Commonly called a Rubia (literally Blondie) they were minted by the Republic to replace the original coins which were melted down for their metal content.

After the end of the civil war they became worthless bits of metal, and most were melted down, but enough survived hidden away in drawers that they are quite widely available for sale on sites such as ebay for a few dollars.

I've long been interested in the civil war period in Spain. As a young woman, my mother worked for a while for an organisation, probably the same one that facilitated the journey of young men volunteering for the International Brigade,  that bought Basque refugee orphans to Scotland to resettle them.

The project was probably well meaning rather than well thought through and seems to have disappeared after a year or two leaving only a small trace in the historical record.

I've not been able to find any record of what happened to the orphan children, some of whom were clearly traumatised by the bombing of Basque towns and cities.