Kelvinator 🇪🇸

In Spain, Kelvinator was not an import: it was a factory. Constructora de Aparatos de Refrigeración, S.A. (CARSA), controlled by the Olazábal family—a Basque business group with origins in food in Mexico—raised a plant in Getafe in 1959 to manufacture under license from the Detroit brand “the American refrigerator of worldwide fame,” as their 1960s ads proclaimed. Kelvinator, founded in 1914 and which in 1923 controlled 80 % of the U.S. refrigerator market, provided the name, the technology and the prestige; CARSA supplied the chassis, the compressors and the workers from the south of Madrid. Its great asset in the 1970s was the no‑frost, which the Getafe factory claimed to produce without rival in Europe.

Although the U.S. parent company also manufactured window air conditioners, in the Spanish catalogs we have located —1960 models with capacities in cubic feet— only refrigerators appear, and historical sources speak of iceboxes and freezers. If CARSA ever assembled Kelvinator air‑conditioning units for the Spanish market, we have found no record; the “Kelvinator” air units seen today in Spain are a product of the Electrolux era, when the brand became a global licensing name.

The ending was bitter. In February 1980 CARSA suspended payments with 2,660 million pesetas of debt. In 1981 it still employed 2,100 people; after the incentivized layoffs of September 1983, 797 remained. In December 1983 the Ministry of Industry declared the company unviable due to a deficit of 4,000 million. The workers presented a viability plan of 600 million based on the no‑frost technology and its export potential, and the Community of Madrid tried to create a cooperative, but the negotiations fell apart over the conditions set by the president, Jaime Olazábal. The factory closed in 1984 and in 2004 the Kelvinator site was already a development of a thousand homes.

A useful clarification for the enthusiast: Ibelsa, Ibérica de Electrodomésticos, S.A., which is sometimes cited alongside Kelvinator, had no relation to it. It was the company created in 1965 in Alcalá de Henares by the Italian Zanussi and the Grupo Fierro (owner of Cointra) to manufacture with Zanussi technology. By around 1970, 75 % of the washing machines and 65 % of the refrigerators made in Spain were produced with foreign technical assistance: Kelvinator in Getafe, Zanussi in Alcalá, Westinghouse in Vizcaya… Air conditioning, however, followed a different path, that of Interclisa and Roca.

In Spain

The advertisement resolves the doubt left open by this sheet: the Kelvinator air conditioners that were sold in Spain in the 60s did not come from Getafe, but from the United States. A magazine page from 1964 announces across the board “Now, Kelvinator air conditioners” over a photo of a window unit crossed out by a label “USA Imported” and the seal “5 years warranty”; the text explains that “in Spain —now— Kelvinator offers its world‑famous air conditioners that will provide you with Kelvinator ambience” and that, “imported directly from the U.S., they are characterized by their great cooling capacity and high performance. Quiet, compact, automatic, elegant and low‑consumption, they cool, dehumidify and purify the air.” Another sheet from the 60s, catalogued as “Kelvinator USA imported original,” repeats the message. While CARSA manufactured refrigerators in Getafe under license, the brand’s air conditioning entered as an import, with the five‑year warranty as an argument against domestic units.

A side detail helps to place the channels: the Barcelona-based Anglo-Spanish Electricidad, which in 1966 signed the advertisement for the Admiral reversible-cycle, had been Kelvinator's representative for radios and refrigeration in the 20s and 30s, according to the history collected by Radiomuseum, although we have not been able to confirm that it continued representing it in the 60s. The 1964 advertisement does not carry a distributor footnote.

Pending verification

If CARSA manufactured air conditioners in addition to refrigerators; the relationship (if any) of Ibelsa with air conditioning; the slug «kelvinator-espana» has been used to avoid colliding with a possible entry for the American Kelvinator.

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