Banknotes and coins

Production and putting into circulation

The Banco of España puts euro banknotes into circulation. Some of them are produced by the Spanish public printing works and the rest are received from other national central banks in accordance with the system of decentralised, joint production established by the European Central Bank (ECB).

From 1999 to 2001, each national central bank in the Eurosystem was responsible for calculating the volume of euro banknotes it needed for the launch of the euro. The production of euro banknotes required in Spain for the launch was 1.924 billion, spread among the seven denominations (€5, €10, €20, €50, €100, €200 and €500).

In 2002 the production system for euro banknotes was changed and reorganised according to a decentralised, joint production model, so that each national central bank is now responsible for producing a given number of banknotes of one or two denominations. The Banco de España was responsible for producing some of the €20 and €50 banknotes.

Banknote serial numbers are preceded by a country code, which is a letter indicating the central bank that ordered the printing of the banknote, not necessarily that of the country in which it was produced: