Mepamsa 🇪🇸

Mepamsa is today synonymous with extractor hoods, but for two decades it also manufactured air conditioning, and veteran technicians remember it among the “now dead” brands that were dismantled throughout Spain. The company was founded in 1955 in Noáin, near Pamplona, as Metálicas de Pamplona, S.A., “dedicated to the manufacture of equipment for the home and office, including air‑conditioning units, furniture and catalytic stoves”; its great success was the butane catalytic stoves Buta‑therm'X, and in 1967 it began with kitchen hoods. Still in the 1990s Navarra exporters catalogue it was defined as a manufacturer of “extractor hoods, extractors, mobile gas stoves, wall‑mounted and portable, electric convectors and heat accumulators, dehumidifiers and air conditioning”, with 250 employees and 65 % of exports to Italy.

In 1989 the group decided to focus on bells, and air conditioning gradually disappeared from the catalogue throughout the 90s; from that final stage there are still devices with remote controls that their owners try to repair (“the remote of the Mepamsa air conditioner from the 90s broke, what do I do?”, asked someone on a repair website) and the universal compatible remotes sold by spare‑parts stores. A technician with twenty years of experience cited it in 2009 alongside National, Edesa, President, Philco, Electrolux and Westinghouse as brands he had assembled and then disassembled, and noted that “several of these brands were manufactured in Spain”.

The legendary Noáin factory was demolished in 2021; Mepamsa still exists as a range of hoods within the Franke group. For the collector, a split or a window Mepamsa from the 80s with a Navarre plate is a rare piece of the Spanish white goods line that has been repurposed.

The sources are of two types. Documentary: the Navarra exporters catalog (export.navarra.net), which lists air conditioning among the products of Mepamsa, S.A. and gives the 250 employees and the markets; the technical service and spare parts websites that offer compatible controls for Mepamsa devices; and the query on GuiaReparaciones about a control for a “90s” unit. Oral: the September 2009 thread on elaireacondicionado.com in which user ELEUTERIO lists Mepamsa among the brands “that today are also dead” that he installed as a replacement for Crolls, Carrier and Fedders. The corporate history (1955, Noáin, catalytic stoves, hoods since 1967, reorientation in 1989, demolition in 2021) comes from the cited news and company profiles. We have not found any Mepamsa air‑conditioning advertisement in collecting circles, which suggests it was sold through installer and store channels without press campaigns.

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