Roca · York 🇪🇸

Roca is, for any Spaniard, the brand of the washbasin. But the Roca Radiators Company, founded in Gavà in 1917 manufacturing cast‑iron radiators, was also for half a century one of the two major national air‑conditioning manufacturers. In 1963 it set up in the then‑emerging Campoamor district, in the southern part of Sabadell, a factory dedicated exclusively to climate control, and started with several foreign licenses, among them that of York‑Borg Warner, the historic Pennsylvania firm that had brought cooling to the White House and the Capitol. The units were sold under the brand “Clima Roca” or simply “Roca”, and with them banks, hotels and offices in Spain’s developmental era were cooled.

The plant was one of Sabadell's industrial engines in the 60s and 70s, with about 350 employees, and also a hotspot of conflict: in January 1975, when the dismissal of temporary workers was announced, the staff occupied the factory and there were arrests and sanctions, in one of the strikes that marked the end of Francoism in the city. In 1982 the division opened offices with technical and logistical support in the main European capitals to export, and in the 90s it participated with four other companies in the development of the Hidrofive system, a bet on water as a thermal transport fluid against the direct expansion that was coming from Japan.

In 1995 Roca turned its division into a joint venture with York International, Clima Roca York, S.L., and the brand changed its look: in the ads and on the appliances of the 90s and 2000s it read “Roca York,” and the factory on Espronceda promenade became York’s production center for Europe. Ten years later, in 2005, York bought the remaining 50 % that Roca still owned; just a few months later, in August 2005, Johnson Controls acquired all of York for about 3.200 billion dollars, and in 2007 the subsidiary was renamed Johnson Controls. Roca kept the sanitaryware and left air conditioning forever.

The end came slowly. With about 125 workers, in 2013 Johnson Controls announced the closure of the Sabadell plant for 2015. The old warehouses on Paseo de Espronceda, still photographed with the sign “Roca – Johnson Controls,” were demolished, and the developer BeLog bought the 32,000‑square‑metre plot to build two logistics warehouses. Today the “Roca York” units still appear on terraces and on Wallapop, small fossils from the era when a split could carry the same surname as the bidet.

The period advertising corrects a date on this sheet: the double signature “Roca York” was not born with the joint company in 1995, but was already heading the ads of the late 60s. A 1969 magazine page titled “Aire acondicionado Roca York” boasts about the World Trade Center in New York (“the tallest building in the world, 411 meters high, 2 towers of 110 floors”) and states that “in Spain Roca-York constitutes the firmest guarantee for any air‑conditioning project,” with photos of Spanish buildings already climate‑controlled and the footer “Clima Roca, air‑conditioning division of Compañía Roca‑Radiadores, Gavá (Barcelona),” with branches Central (Avda. de América 33, Madrid), Catalonia‑Levante (Paseo de Gracia 29, Barcelona), North (Villarías 10, Bilbao) and South (Image 8, Sevilla). A 1970 press clipping with the same heading details the range: “solves any climate‑control problem, from the simplest window unit to the most powerful central installation,” draws window units, consoles and vertical cabinets and cites “the responsibility of manufacturing in its own factory in Sabadell.”

The commercial network is older: on todocoleccion the menus of the “III Convención Aire Acondicionado Clima Roca” are sold, with the inaugural banquet at the Hotel Majestic in Barcelona on April 18, 1967 and the closing at the Avenida Palace on the 20th, which places the first convention around 1965. In the ’70s the brand was already targeting the consumer: a magazine page with childlike drawings proclaimed “también en aire acondicionado, Roca es máxima garantía,” and a clipping from Las Provincias on May 3, 1975 shows a Valencian installer, Industrias MAG (San Vicente 204), announcing “dele un aire Roca York a su hogar... le instalamos el equipo idóneo, lo financiamos.” A Barcelona catalog from the 1970s by Casa Edison (Joaquín Clavell Borràs) included Roca alongside Delchi, General Electric and Gibson.

From the 80s there remains a pocket calendar “Aire acondicionado Roca” from 1983 and another from 1985, a postcard from 1982, stickers “Yo amo Roca” and “La boutique del aire acondicionado, Roca”, and the successive editions of the manual “Generalidades sobre aire acondicionado” from Publicaciones Técnicas Roca (1973, 1986), the book with which many installers were trained. The latest located advertising piece is from 2005, already in the York‑Johnson Controls stage.

Pending verification

What other licenses, besides York‑Borg Warner, were used in 1963; the exact date of the final closure (announced for 2015).

History machine-translated from Spanish. Can you improve it? Write to us. hola@frostalgia.com