Abanca Brand Guidelines: The Galician Bank Named in 2014 From the Region’s Savings Banks

Two savings banks become one.

Abanca’s roots lie in the savings banks of Galicia. Caixa Galicia, based in A Coruña, was formed in 1978 from the savings banks of A Coruña and Lugo and of Ferrol, Spanish Wikipedia says. Caixanova was formed on 17 July 2000 from the municipal savings bank of Vigo, dated to 1880, and the provincial savings banks of Pontevedra (1930) and Ourense (1933). The two merged on 1 December 2010 to form NovaCaixaGalicia.

Under a 2011 royal decree-law on savings banks, NovaCaixaGalicia moved its banking business into a new bank, NCG Banco, founded on 14 September 2011; English Wikipedia says it was the first bank to include the Galician language in its founding deed. It traded as Novagalicia Banco from October 2011 in Galicia, Asturias and León, and from March 2012 as EVO Banco elsewhere in Spain. The state restructuring fund, the FROB, took a majority stake in 2011 and full control in December 2012, after which the savings bank became a foundation. The EVO Banco business was sold to a fund managed by Apollo Global Management, with the transfer completed on 28 February 2014.

In July 2012, English Wikipedia says, the bank ran a media campaign apologising to customers for the savings banks’ property lending and for the sale of preference shares to customers who had not understood the risks.

Sold, renamed and expanded.

The FROB began selling NCG Banco in November 2013. On 18 December 2013 it chose the bid of Banco Etcheverría, a Spanish bank controlled by the Venezuelan group Banesco; the European Commission approved the sale on 20 June 2014 and it was finalised on 25 June 2014, English Wikipedia says. Banesco had said in April 2014 that the Novagalicia Banco name would be dropped.

The new brand appeared within days. From 27 June 2014 the bank operated as Abanca, a name English Wikipedia explains as Galician for “the bank,” presented at an event in Santiago de Compostela; Spanish Wikipedia notes that the name is styled with two slashes before it, in capitals. Banco Etcheverría was absorbed on 14 November 2014, the merged bank took its registered office in Betanzos, in Banco Etcheverría’s former head office, and the legal name became ABANCA Corporación Bancaria on 1 December 2014.

Growth since then has come through purchases. elDiario.es reported on 5 April 2021 that Abanca had agreed to buy the Spanish network of Novo Banco, pending regulatory approval, and called it the bank’s sixth corporate operation since 2014; earlier ones included Popular Servicios Financieros in 2017 and, in 2018, Deutsche Bank’s private and commercial business in Portugal and Banco Caixa Geral, the Spanish bank of Caixa Geral de Depósitos. English Wikipedia dates completion of the Novo Banco deal to 30 November 2021.

Each purchase was folded into the Abanca name. Bankoa, bought from Crédit Agricole in January 2021, has traded in the Basque Country and Navarre as Bankoa Abanca since November 2021. Targobank’s Spanish business, bought in October 2023, used the name Targobank Abanca until its systems were integrated in June 2024. In Portugal, Abanca agreed to buy EuroBic in November 2023 and completed the purchase on 11 July 2024, Spanish Wikipedia says. Not every bid went ahead: an offer for Liberbank in February 2019 was withdrawn after the market regulator, the CNMV, objected to its conditions and shareholder support fell short, English Wikipedia says.

Savings-bank heritage, modern banks.

Spanish and Portuguese banks tend to present themselves through a strong wordmark and a small set of colours, most often a blue, a red or a green. Many of today’s names are recent: BBVA settled on a single initialism for every market in 2019, and CaixaBank took its name in 2011, yet both carry much older histories, in the case of BBVA back to Banco de Bilbao in 1857.

Savings-bank and regional heritage runs deep in the sector. Several of the banks in this guide grew out of the cajas and caixas, the savings banks that served a city or a region, and mergers have often kept old local names on the branches of their home territory. Foundations formed from those savings banks remain shareholders in some of the banks and fund cultural, scientific and social work, such as the la Caixa Foundation and its CaixaForum centres.

On their own websites the banks give most space to everyday banking: current accounts, cards, mortgages, savings and the mobile apps that now carry much of the business, often with digital-only brands beside the main one. Branch fronts and head-office buildings in the banks’ home cities appear often in their photography, and sponsorship of football, basketball and other sports keeps their names in public view.

For the design-minded, the useful material sits in the banks’ corporate sections: brand pages, press releases about new logos, and the annual reports that every listed bank publishes. This guide reads those alongside independent dated sources; the palettes are our own unofficial interpretations, and no logo or mark is reproduced.

A Galician name across Iberia.

On its website Abanca describes itself as a bank “with an Iberian vocation,” focused on the financial needs of businesses and families, with more than 8,000 staff and points of sale in Spain, Portugal and nine other countries in Europe and the Americas. English Wikipedia notes that its offices abroad sit in places with strong Galician communities, and that it has operating headquarters in Vigo as well as its registered office.

Much of its public presence is cultural. Abanca says it has been the sole patron of Afundación, which it calls its social work arm, since 2014; the foundation runs educational, social and cultural programmes. It also says its art collection and its historic library include works and volumes declared Bien de Interés Cultural, the Spanish heritage listing, and in 2020 it launched a website to show the Colección ABANCA to the public. It says it is the only bank present in 141 Galician municipalities, and supports grassroots sport through a programme called ABANCA Deporte Base.

Its timeline also stresses digital banking. Abanca says that in 2016 it became the first Spanish bank to let customers log in to its mobile app with a fingerprint, and that its mobile banking passed one million users in 2021.

For a design guide, Abanca shows how a bank built from older institutions can carry one short name across several acquired brands. Compare Unicaja, which absorbed Liberbank in 2021, and Caixa Geral de Depósitos, whose Spanish bank Abanca bought. For this guide we use an Atlantic blue, a deep navy and a pale sky with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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