As a former colonial empire, Spain actually possessed a considerable gold reserve. However, due to its weakened national power, plus a large part of the wealth belonging to the former royal Bourbon family, when the Bourbon family fled north to France, they took a large amount of gold and other properties with them.
Currently, the gold reserves under the control of the Spanish Government are less than 200 tons. The gold reserves in Carlo's possession are even less, totaling less than ten tons altogether.
There's no helping it. Gold, during the era of the gold standard, wasn't all that important to nations.
Having gold allows for currency printing, and the ratio between gold and currency could not possibly be fixed at 1:1.
In some countries with more gold reserves, the actual printed ratio of gold to currency reaches more than 1:10.
What does this mean? Holding gold worth 100 million pounds could result in the issuance of over 1 billion pounds of banknotes.
