That sounds like a lot, but is in fact just 3.5% of what was in circulation on the last day of the peseta's reign. Which is partly why the state bank isn't very concerned about Mugardos' efforts.

The bank said the circulation of its dual-currency credit card reached 10 million by the end of 2006, a jump of 100 percent from 2005, and accounted for 35 percent of the credit card market in China.

The upshot, says the International Monetary Fund, is that M2, a measure of money in circulation plus bank deposits, is up a whopping 52 per cent in the past two years.