By Carles Prats.

We have detected a worrying and growing presence in some nonprofessional, online auction sites of forgeries imitating Republican local war tax stamps. Some of these values were listed by Luis Alemany in the Sofima-Fesofi “Catálogo de los sellos «locales» emitidos durante la guerra civil española 1936-1939” (Correos y Telégrafos, 1995) and by Julio Allepuz in his “Catálogo de los sellos locales de la guerra civil española 1936-1939”, Cataluña, Tomo I (Edifil, 2011), because when those works were printed it was not known that the mentioned stamps were only imitations.

A short number of pieces of these values were in the market when the catalogues were written, and this lead the authors not to suspect the legitimacy of these pieces now proven spurious. The person responsible for these printings was cautious enough to keep 99.9% of his production in storage, so that specialists didn’t have reason to think such extremely scarce stamps were forgeries. and they graded them with R and RR in catalogues. Even prestigious auction houses were confused (at least two recent auctions of major Spanish auctioneers included these imitations and then removed them from the catalogues when they noticed those stamps were spurious).

The affected issues are those from Alió (Tarragona), Bràfim (Tarragona) Gavà (Barcelona), Llavanera (unexistent town, possibly Sant Andreu de Llavaneres in Barcelona), Sarrià de Ter (Girona), Solsona (Lleida), Tàrrega (Lleida), Terrassa (Barcelona) and Vilabella (Tarragona). All the war tax stamps of these towns are forgeriess, except those from Tàrrega listed by Allepuz in page 270 in volume I of his catalogue. All other Tàrrega issues are forgeries not issued during the Civil War. Terrassa issues listed in the Allepuz catalogue are also legitimate (pages 206 to 210) except number 13.

Generally, these forgeries have no gum (although some of them are gummed), perforate or imperforate, with several colors and face values, most of them not listed in any catalogue. They are usually roughly perforated using a pin and they all share a similar pattern: typographic designs and mention of the supposed year of issue, something really unusual in local war tax stamps. They are also all printed on the same type of paper, in cream or green blue colors.

Their face values are usually the same in the different sets, and they have a range from 5c to 1.5p. It is very likely that all these forged issues have the same face values, and it is possible they gradually appear in the market despite not being detected yet.

They were printed between 1960 and 1970 in a printer in Tarragona province, but it was not until 2017, when the archive of the promoter of these forgeries was sold, that these pieces flooded the market in significant quantities.

We present below a compilation of the forgeries we have seen so far. All the values can appear perforate or not, with or without gum, and in a great variety of colors and papers. We just record the general type and values we know up to the date of each forgery:

Now observe them all together and note obvious design coincidences and shared typographic composition (the cheapest one to print):

A final tip: none of these “stamps” have ever been seen on cover. If you want to check the legitimacy of a stamp you have doubts about, see if you find it on cover. If you find it discard your doubts. If you don’t find it continue doubting. If you need help, contact us.

For more information, see LABARGA, Pablo (in collaboration with Julio Allepuz and Carles Prats): “Reciente aparición de fantasías filatélicas relacionadas con la guerra civil española”, Revista de Filatelia nr. 558, April 2018, pages 290-293.