Interclisa 🇪🇸

International de Climatización, S.A. —Interclisa for the whole world— was for three decades the great Madrid-based air‑conditioning manufacturer and, together with Roca, the brand that a Spaniard of the 70s and 80s associated with “putting on air”. Julio Cano Lacunza, in his industry chronicle for Atecyr, cites Roca, Klimat and Elyte as the four national manufacturers that met the demand in the 60s and 70s, when air‑conditioning began to spread through banks, hotels, cinemas and hospitals. The technical‑service websites repeat a founding date, 1966, which we have not been able to verify with a primary source; it is certain, however, that the company was based in Madrid (its NIF is from the province) and that its large factory was erected in Guadalajara, in the industrial‑decongestion zones of Madrid that, since the 60s, attracted thousands of residents from the villages of the Alcarria to work at Vicasa, Tudor, Colgate, Bresel… and Interclisa.

Regarding its technical origin, among enthusiasts circulates the tradition that Interclisa started manufacturing under a Westinghouse license. We have not found any document, period advertisement, or record that confirms it, so we leave it as oral tradition. What is in Carrier’s official history is the end of its independent stage: in 1986 the Syracuse multinational bought Interclisa as part of its wave of acquisitions in the ’80s (Delchi in Italy and Springer in Brazil in 1983, Daewoo in 1985). The company became Interclisa/Carrier, S.A., was listed on the stock exchange — it still appears in the CNMV records — and absorbed Carrier Spain. In its ’80 and ’90 catalogs the units bore the double signature “Interclisa Carrier” and registered names such as Brisa, Mistral, Nevada, Siesta, Sky, Corner, Cassette, Multiplex or Ariagel, all now expired. Forum technicians remember them as industrial, heavy machines with R‑22, which in 2012 were still operating after twenty years.

The Alcarreña factory came to employ a thousand people. In 1999 the multinational announced its closure despite the plant having billed up to August 18,000 million pesetas with 1,800 million profit and 30 % more production than the previous year. On October 7, 1999 about 17,000 people—one in three inhabitants—took to the streets in the largest demonstration in the history of Guadalajara; the Industry councilor called it “the worst industrial problem” that Castilla‑La Mancha had ever experienced. The 2000 agreement reassigned 300 of the 500 permanent workers, most of them to the company that kept the facilities, and gave early retirement to the rest. A book by the Federico Engels Foundation, “Carrier. Lessons from a Struggle,” documents that conflict.

The epilogue is less sad than it seems: the plant did not die. The Italian ECO, manufacturer of heat exchangers, established ECO Refrigeración Ibérica on April 27, 2000 on the same Avenida Cristóbal Colón in the Henares industrial estate; the plant later passed to Luvata and today is called Modine CIS Guadalajara, with 411 employees in 2024 and growing turnover. There, heat exchangers for air‑conditioning are still being manufactured on the same floor where the Interclisa were born. The brand survived a few years in Carrier’s catalogue and disappeared completely when its registrations expired between 2010 and 2017.

The first thing that catches the eye when tracking collecting is an absence: in the two large collections of air‑conditioning advertising leaflets that circulate on todocoleccion (Spanish magazines from 1955 to 1976) appear Westinghouse, Fedders, Carrier, Crolls, Roca, Airwell, Kelvinator, Philco, Admiral, Gibson or Amana, but not a single Interclisa advertisement. This fits the testimony of a Mallorcan technician who started in the trade in 1972 and who, in a professional forum in 2009, recalled that at the time “in Spain there were only the brands Crolls, Carrier, Fedders and a few more”: Interclisa was not yet, in the early ’70s, a consumer brand with press campaigns, but a manufacturer for installers.

What it has left, however, is a trace of commercial network and promotional object. On todocoleccion they sell a period sticker with the lynx head logo and the legend “Interclisa aire acondicionado”, a Heraclio Fournier deck of cards with brand advertising, “Interclisa-Carrier” keychains (one with the reference V52) and a positive printing cliché from a Murcian distributor, Gaspar Moreno Sánchez, “Exposición y venta, C/ Mayor 63, 30011 Los Dolores (Murcia)”, which advertised “instalación inmediata, mantenimiento y recambios garantizados, financiación” with drawings of a console and a wall‑mounted split; the five‑digit postal code places it in the second half of the ’80s. There is also a share certificate of Interclisa Carrier, S.A. issued in Madrid on 27 June 1990, with registered office at Espronceda 34 and a capital of 2.250 million pesetas, documenting the listed stage after the purchase by Carrier.

The technicians' forums provide the models: on forofrio the electrical schematics of an Interclisa TASH-13-B unit from 1981 were requested at the time; on elaireacondicionado.com a user was looking in 2020 for fan blades for an MC S50 b, and another described in 2012 an industrial device “código 415” about twenty years old with R-22, “the brand was already absorbed by Carrier”. On todoexpertos, in 2004, there was talk of an Interclisa-Carrier duct unit of 6.950/7.400 W with a Copeland ZR28K1 compressor installed around 1996: machines from the latest stage, already with the double signature.

Pending verification

The founding date (1966) only appears on service‑technical websites; the Westinghouse license has not been documented in any source; the exact percentage of Carrier in 1986 and the figure of 1,000 employees come from secondary sources.

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