Spanish Municipal Issues: Postage Stamps or Cinderellas?
According to Linn’s World Stamp Almanac a cinderella is a stamplike label that is not a postage stamp. Cinderellas include seals and bogus issues, as well as revenue stamps, local post issues and other similar items, per. However, a great many cinderella stamps are listed in Scott catalogues. Local postage stamps are stamps that were valid within a limited postal system.
Six stamps picturing King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia were put on sale October 1, 1907 at the Madrid Industrial Exposition for financial support. They were not valid for postage.
Stamps were issued to publicize the Barcelona Philatelic Congress and EXPOSITION in 1929. Two postal tax stamps are listed in Scott as numbers 371-372. These were the only two listed of the several issues. The others are considered as promotional poster stamps.
The 1929 Barcelona International Exposition provided the pretext to urbanize a mountainous area and connect it to Barcelona. Nine million copies of these “Ayuntamiento de Barcelona” stamps were made of the first issue. Since then, new stamps were issued at Christmas, with some of the proceeds going to charity, a tradition that continued to 1950. Below are examples of local usage.