For a really interesting take on the changeover from Pounds to Euros check out Danny Boyle’s Millions.
Nitpick - the largest was Dos Tontos, 500 PTS
Oh hell no. That’s a huge simplification. For starters in the case of Spain you need to add comissions to politicians, turning aerodromes into airports, building airports in places nobody had ever wanted to flow to (I mean, on one hand Teruel was needing to remind the rest of Spain that it exists* and on the other they got an airport? in Teruel? and that one is among those which actually work, having been turned into an airplane-maintenance area… note it doesn’t really work as an airport), way too much dependence on building and building and building, bank loans which should never have happened in the first place, people buying three homes with the intent to sell the two they actually shouldn’t legally have been able to buy and live in the third one, overspending on the part of everybody (government, private companies, individuals) and calling it “growth”… the idea that all that would have been fixed by having the ability to wave a magic wand (no matter which specific form that one magic wand takes) is, well, yah, a huge simplification.
- Teruel también existe. “Teruel exists, too”. Teruel includes the areas with the lowest population density in Spain and they’re a bit tired of being treated as if they had even less people than they do.
…nobody had ever wanted to fly to… now that’s one weird typo, I swear I do know the difference between those two verbs… 
Iberian flyover country?
More like… if Old Castille is flyover, Teruel is barely flyaround. Damn good ham and some real pretty mudejar architecture, but the place doesn’t even make it into history books.
Also note (no pun intended) that in some Euro countries it is still possible to change leftover old paper and/or coins to Euro at that country’s central bank.
Here in Italy there was a 10-year grace period which ended on 6th December 2011. Sometimes a person makes the news for finding their deceased grandparents hidden big old stash of now worthless cash.
The bank I was working at in 2002 still had legacy financial contracts denominated in French francs, Italian lire, etc. for several years afterwards. As noted, it wasn’t too complicated because it was just a constant factor of the euro foreign exchange rate.
I don’t know how economically sophisticated the Polish objections are, but it’s worth pointing out that the economic theory on which the common Euro was based, has been demonstrated (by events) to be incorrect. The idea was that the common euro would drive the disparate economies into a common economy, without economic penalties. This was contrary to earlier economic theory, but was widely accepted at the time.
So were back to a place where people can legitimately believe that joining the common currency might just be an economic mistake.
The question of what drives economic differences between countries which are part of the Eurozone has a pretty complicated answer, though; there’s differences in the physical environment, in the legal systems, in the educational systems, in how housing is perceived and expected to be, and people still speak different languages. And that’s just off the top of this non-economist’s head.
In the end, the Euro plus Schengen has had exactly the same consequences as the creation of a single coinage system and elimination of customs when Spain (1841), Italy or Germany (both also 19th century) became unified: it’s made trade and movement of people easier, but it hasn’t uniformized Berlin and Madrid any more than the previous ones uniformized Tudela and Alcalá de Henares, Milano and Napoli or Bonn and Munich.
Yeah - I also remember that at first prices were labelled with francs in large bold fonts and the equivalent euro value underneath & smaller ; then progressively it switched around with euro values being the “normal” one and the equivalent in francs underneath. Then the converted prices were phased out in turn a couple years down the line. Most stores sort of abused the transition as well - for example soda cans used to cost 5 francs everywhere. Nice, round number (and just one coin). After the switch, they’d typically cost 1 euro - another nice, round number, another singular coin… but actually ~20% more expensive.
Also, some people never *ever *managed to mentally switch. My grandmother, to her last day, would still talk in francs when she was talking about sums larger than a grocery trip - and not the “real” franc which I knew either, but the old ones (we’d already switched francs back in 1960, although the conversion was simpler : 1 new franc was equal to 100 old francs, the old francs becoming the new cents). I always had to do a mental double-take when she’d moan about having to fork out e.g. 10.000 francs for car repairs. Like “holy shit, that’s outrag… oh, no, wait, that’s just like 150 euros, it’s perfectly fine”
There’s a parallel here in the U.S with the continuing debate about whether to eliminate the penny.
Suppose the U.S. decides to eliminate the one cent coin, and from now on, the 5 cent piece will be the lowest coin. The first thing they do is tell everyone to spend, exchange, or deposit all their pennies to get rid of them. The next thing they do is tell you can’t spend them, only exchange or deposit them. The final thing you do is round all retail prices to the nearest five cents.
Now there will be millions of people screaming that everything that used to be seven cents is now ten cents instead of five (maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, maybe it’s just inflation and the retailer held the item at seven cents when it should have cost nine cents), and when the last person in the world dies and the last account is settled, there may be three cents left over that can’t be reconciled, but that’s about it.
Why would the Government say pennies are no longer legal tender?
Just stop minting them, and as they get turned in the banks, they get withdrawn.
In Goodbye Lenin (a movie I highly recommend) there is a plot point related to a deadline after which the East German Marks became worthless. I can’t verify this, but given that it was intended for German audiences who lived through that time I assume that it was accurate.