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| 1000 Spanish pesetas |
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| Bank of Spain 1000 Pesetas |
Spain currency 1000 Pesetas banknote 1971 Banco de España
Spanish banknotes, Spanish bank notes, Spanish paper money, Spain banknotes, Spain bank notes, Spain paper money.Obverse: Portrait of Jose Echegaray, engraved by Antonio Manso Fernández.
Reverse: Bank of Spain in Madrid, engraved by Antonio Sánchez..
Watermark: José Echegaray.
Dimensions: 152 x 94 mm.
Date of Issue: 17 September 1971 (in circulation from June 22, 1974).
Printed by Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre, Madrid.
The headquarters of the national Bank of Spain is housed in a colossal building occupying a whole block. It is in one of the most central positions in Madrid, at Plaza Cibeles, in full view of the Cibeles Fountain, and on the corner of the Paseo del Prado.
Work was begun on the building in 1884, when King Alfonso XII symbolically laid the first stone, and the work was designed by the Bank's own architects Severiano Sainz de la Lastra and Eduardo de Adaro. The site had previously been occupied by the Marquis of Alcañices' palace, which had been demolished, and the Bank's new building was inaugurated in 1891.
The staircase in this part of the building, which leads from the Paseo del Prado entrance, is made of Carrara marble, and was made by Adolfo Areizaga of Bilbao to a design by the Bank's architects.
Spanish Currency - 1000 Pesetas
José Echegaray
José Echegaray y Eizaguirre (19 April 1832 – 4 September 1916) was a Spanish civil engineer, mathematician, statesman, and one of the leading Spanish dramatists of the last quarter of the 19th century. He was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize for Literature "in recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama".
Biography
He was born in Madrid on April 19, 1832. His father, a doctor and institute professor, was from Aragon and his mother was from Navarra. He spent his childhood in Murcia, where he finished his elementary school education. It was there, at the Murcia Institute, where he first gained his love for math.
In order to earn enough money for the Engineering School of Channels and Ports, he moved at the age of fourteen to Madrid, where he enrolled at the newly created Second Teaching Institute of San Isidro. At the age of twenty, he left the Madrid School with a Civil Engineering degree, which he had obtained with the first of his promotion, and he had to move to Almeria and Granada to begin working at his first job.
In his childhood he read Goethe, Homer, and Balzac, readings that alternated with those of mathematicians like Gauss, Legendre, and Lagrange.
José Echegaray maintained constant activity until his death on 14 September 1916 in Madrid. His extensive work did not stop growing in his old age: in the final stage of his life he wrote 25 or 30 mathematical physics volumes. At the age of 83 he commented:
I cannot die, because if I am going to write my mathematical physics encyclopedia, I need at least 25 more years.
Professor and Scientist
In 1854 he began teaching a class at the Engineering Paths School, working as a secretary there also. He taught mathematics, stereotomy, hydraulics, descriptive geometry, and differential and physical calculus from that year until 1868. From 1858 to 1860 he was also a professor at the Assistants’ School of Public Works.
Early life
José de Echegaray was born into a family of scholars. His father was a professor of Greek. Echegaray attended engineering school besides a degree in economics.
Government service
Echegaray also entered politics in later life. He enjoyed an illustrious career in the government sector, being appointed Minister of Public Works and Finance Minister successively.
Literary career
Along with the Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904, after having been nominated that year by a member of the Royal Spanish Academy, making him the first Spaniard to win the prize. His most famous play is El gran Galeoto, a drama written in the grand nineteenth century manner of melodrama. It is about the poisonous effect that unfounded gossip has on a middle-aged man's happiness. Echegaray filled it with elaborate stage instructions that illuminate what we would now consider a hammy style of acting popular in the 19th century. Paramount Pictures filmed it as a silent with the title changed to The World and His Wife. His most remarkable plays are Saint or Madman? (O locura o santidad, 1877); Mariana (1892); El estigma (1895); The Calum (La duda, 1898); and El loco Dios (God, the fool, 1900).
Theater had always been the love of José Echegaray's life. His plays reflected his sense of duty, which had made him famous during his time in the governmental offices. Dilemmas centered on a sense of duty and morality are the motif of his plays. He replicated the achievements of his predecessors of the Spanish Golden Age, remaining a prolific playwright. Among his most famous plays are La esposa del vengador (1874) [The Avenger's Wife]; En el puño de la espada (1875) [In the Sword's Handle]; En el pilar y en la cruz (1878) [On the Stake and on the Cross]; and Conflicto entre dos deberes (1882) [Conflict of Two Duties].