Frimotor 🇪🇸

Frimotor, S.A.E. is the oldest Spanish air‑conditioning manufacturer featured in this encyclopedia, and until now it was only remembered for its refrigerators and a tragedy. The company, based in Erandio on the right bank of the Bilbao estuary, produced under Westinghouse license refrigerators, washing machines, irons, air conditioners, train components, and even prototypes of electric cars and buses, and employed more than 750 people, according to the industrial heritage inventory of Bizkaia. Its “Frimotor licencia Westinghouse” 1960s refrigerators still appear on the second‑hand market.

The advertising shows that Frimotor's cold did not stay in the kitchen. In 1955 it advertised in magazines the “Unitaire air conditioner, manufactured by Frimotor, S.A.E. with Westinghouse licenses,” a vertical cabinet designed for commerce and industry that “solves all problems in a wonderfully resolved device, easy to install and with an aesthetic appearance.” In 1959 it made the jump to the home with “the new window air conditioner that Frimotor, S.A.E. manufactures with the Westinghouse technique,” which could be seen “at the exhibition of Frimotor’s local distributor.” In other words, in the late autarky Spain a window unit with American technology was already being manufactured in Erandio, eight years before the founding date attributed to Interclisa.

The factory entered history for the worst reason: in 1967 the partial collapse of its facilities caused 16 or 17 deaths and dozens of injuries, one of the most serious workplace accidents in Euskadi. The brand did not survive the 70s; the Westinghouse air‑conditioner ads from 1965 to 1970, already with appliances imported from the United States, lead at the bottom to DYSESA, Distribución y Servicio de Aparatos Domésticos, S.A., of Bilbao, which appears to be the commercial continuation of that Basque network, although we have not been able to document the corporate relationship. The Frimotor building still stands in Erandio as a witness.

Two local magazine ads found on todocoleccion are the documentary proof. The 1955 one, “See it coming... Summer. Don’t let summer catch you off guard,” presents the Unitaire unit as “the new air‑conditioning refrigeration unit” and is signed “Unitaire air conditioner, manufactured by Frimotor, S.A.E. with Westinghouse licenses”; the illustration shows a vertical cabinet with a front grille, the type of standalone unit that was installed in shops and offices. The 1959 one, “Two worlds separated by a wall,” depicts a stifled office worker and a happy one on either side of a wall with a window unit, and concludes: “it’s the concrete position of your home with the new window air conditioner that Frimotor, S.A.E. manufactures with Westinghouse technology. See this model at the Frimotor, S.A.E. dealer exhibition in your town.”

The context is provided by the industrial tourism website of Bizkaia, which summarizes the company's activity (refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioning, railway components, electric car and bus prototypes, more than 750 employees) and the 1967 collapse. And the subsequent link is given by Westinghouse advertisements from 1965-1970, signed by DYSESA of Bilbao, and the testimony of a technician who in 2009 recalled having dismantled old Westinghouse units and that “several of these brands were manufactured in Spain”. If someone preserves a Unitaire or a Frimotor window unit with a plate, it would be one of the most valuable pieces of Spanish air conditioning.

History machine-translated from Spanish. Can you improve it? Write to us.