Peseta makes a come back

A SPANISH village has reintroduced the peseta in a desperate bid to kick-start its ailing local economy.

One in three people in the 3,000 villagers are unemployed, with a jobless rate 10 per cent above the national average.

Thirty businesses in Villamayor de Santiago, a village located 80 miles south east of Madrid, started accepting the old currency at the beginning of this year and has taken more than one million pesetas (roughly 6,000 euros worth) to date.

Many people kept hold of their pesetas when the euro was introduced in January 2002 and it is believed that up to 1.7 billion euros worth of pesetas is still lying around.

Unlike other eurozone countries, pesetas can still be exchanged for euros at the Bank of Spain in Madrid because a deadline was never set for exchanging the currency, according to British daily Daily Mail.

Luis Miguel Campayo, the man in charge of the local retailers association said: “We realised there’s no money here – well, no euros anyway – in the pockets of our customers.”

The peseta scheme at Villamayor finishes at the end of February when they will exchange the pesetas for euros in Madrid.

Take a look at the price tickets on shelves even now you will still see the peseta equivalent, that is definitely the case in supermarket chain Mercadona.

Until last year Mercadona even printed the peseta price at the bottom of the till receipt. Do they perhaps know something we don’t?

By Irena Bodnarec