Crolls 🇪🇸

Crolls is one of those brands that Spaniards of a certain age remember fondly for their washing machines (“a quality washing machine made in Reus,” summed up the Tarragona press), and yet it also manufactured air conditioning, and not just any kind. A full‑page advertisement published in magazines in 1969 proves it: under the headline “…and the window, where is it?” the brand presented its “CROLLS ‘split’ air conditioners, with remote control”: “one half of Crolls on the outside, a small hole in the wall and the other half, with a modern design, on the shelf.” In other words, a split system—as we call it today—at the end of the 1960s, when in Spain the usual unit was the window type, and it also boasted decorating the room. The footnote of the ad, “Crolls air conditioning: the widest range of conditioners,” referred to its Official Demonstration Halls in Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, Zaragoza, Valencia and Palma de Mallorca: a proper and serious own commercial network, not a marginal product.

The economic historiography of the sector, focused on white goods, does not mention this activity, and the company itself remained in memory as a manufacturer of washing machines and dishwashers. Crolls, S.A. had its factory in Reus, a notable technological stronghold for the time, and subsidiaries in Portugal and Germany. It remains to be documented whether the air conditioners were manufactured in Reus or produced under license or agreement with a foreign manufacturer, as many Spanish brands of that era did; the period advertising archives (todocolección, newspaper libraries) are today the best source to reconstruct its air‑conditioning catalogue.

Its corporate history is a chapter of the rise and collapse of the Spanish home appliance industry. In 1974 the Orbaiceta Group —the Navarrese conglomerate of the Super Ser brand, which was building a large industrial hub in Pamplona— began the purchase of Crolls, “a firm with great technological strength,” and completed it in November 1976 after investing 569 million pesetas: 360 for 50 % of the capital and 209 in expansions. It was a risky bet in the midst of the oil crisis, and the indebtedness ended up sinking the group.

In 1983, amid industrial reconversion, Crolls merged with the rest of Orbaiceta into Safel, the holding company participated by the Government of Navarre. In 1989 Bosch‑Siemens (BSH) bought 50.3 % of Safel‑Balay and later the 100 %, and of that whole bouquet of brands —Balay, Lynx, Super Ser, Agni, Corcho, Crolls— it kept only Balay and Lynx for the Spanish market. Crolls was discontinued; according to some industry sources Zanussi even bought the brand without managing to relaunch it, and today the name survives on technical service websites, in the memory of the Reus washing machines, and for enthusiasts, in that 1969 split unit with remote control.

The 1969 advertisement for the split unit with remote control was not an oddity: Crolls maintained throughout the 70s a continuous air‑conditioning campaign aimed at commerce and offices. A 1972 magazine page asks “Will your sweat‑soaked employees be profitable for you?” and warns that “your employees will perform much less during a third of the year if you lack a Crolls air conditioner”; the text offers “price and payment conditions”, draws a window unit and adds that “if your case is special, the Crolls split conditioner will allow you to have air conditioning in your workplace without having to carry out any construction work”. It closes with the slogan “Crolls air conditioner (the costly thing is not having it)” and the footer “Central advice: Madrid‑6, Núñez de Balboa 76, tel. 276 52 28; Barcelona‑8, Provenza 269, tel. 215 40 16”. Another sheet from the same series, “Will your clients visit you if they roast in heat in your premises?”, repeats the slogan and addresses, and a third, in full colour with the headline “¡...fresco!”, shows a wooden console and promises “wide range of devices from window‑type models to the most advanced equipment”, with branches in Barcelona, Madrid and Málaga (Av. Carlos Haya 41). There was also an advertisement in the RENFE magazine, and on the matchboxes of the brand it read “Crolls, air conditioning and household appliances, Sunbeam”, indicating that it also distributed the small American range.

The oral testimony confirms its significance: a technician who started in Mallorca in 1972 recalled in 2009 that back then “in Spain there were only the brands Crolls, Carrier, Fedders and a few others,” and another veteran said he had dismantled “many” Crolls to replace them with brands that are also gone today. Crolls was, therefore, one of the three reference domestic brands of the first half of the ’70s, with a range of window, console and “partido” units.

Pending verification

Year of foundation and founder; whether the air conditioners were manufactured in Reus or under foreign license; scope of the air‑conditioning range beyond the 1969 announcement.

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