Since the end of the 19th century there was a push to unify the currency in order to facilitate commercial exchange and eliminate barriers to free movement of cash that isolated the Azores.

The proposal, supported by public officials and larger merchants, ran counter to the resistance from the local population that paid their taxes 25% greater than island currencies and who were afraid of the monetary crises that occurred during the first half of the 19th century.

Notwithstanding its residential unpopularity, the difference in value was seen as a source of problems for commercial relations, and many sectors of the Azorean economy were interested in settling these issues.

These economic pressures were in line with the ideological stance of the National Dictatorship, which was largely centralist and fanatically nationalist, and who saw the existence of an Azorean currency as an anathema.

[1] Ancillary measures were therefore adopted, under decree-law 21/189 (2 May 1932), that established a deduction for taxpayers and credits for island residents, namely those who, by law or contract, accepted the imposition of the Portuguese escudo in the archipelago.

[1] The issue of an Azorean currency only reappeared in 1975, during the context of the autonomy and independentist movements, that succeeded the 25 April 1974 Carnation Revolution.